Insiders Know All
by Sincerely Kimby
Summary: Twins Percy & Leila Jackson, Death-boy Nico Di Angelo, beautiful genius Annabeth Chase, and gothic Hunter of Artemis Thalia face their biggest challenge yet: Goode High School. Can these heroes of Olympus endure partner-assigned projects, teenage parties, monsters, snobby mortals and homecoming? This is anything but easy and may take every ounce of training they've got. Post TLO AU
1. Phase 1

**Full Story Summary: **_After the Titian War, Annabeth & Nico go to stay with the Jackson twins, Percy and Leila, but they all find out quick that High School will not be as easy as they thought it would be. Can they survive projects, parties, and homecoming? With annoying Snobs, and visits from our favorite Hunter, High School might take every ounce of training they've got._

**(A/N: Hi to old and new peoples alike! Kimby is BACK! Ha-ha, okay I planned to just work on my Lightning Thief fanfic, but because I have to most awesome readers/reviewers in the universe, I decided that I will do the other side of my story From the Outside that so many people reviewed/PMed about it. {By the way: I love you all so much} So, just 'cause you're all so amazing, you can have Leila's POV if you want. Like I've said, I can't do Percy's and I'm not smart enough to do Annabeth's, and because I created Leila, I can easily write from her POV without any problems. It might be different then you were expecting, and I'm not sure everyone will love it, but I hope you all like it. :])**

* * *

><p><span>Phase 1<span>

"Percy!" I screamed. "I'm going to kill you!"

"You'll never catch me!" he shouted, running the out of the bedroom.

_He's dead,_ I thought, jumping out of bed. I slipped on my sneakers and some random clothes—praying to the gods they actually matched—and went tearing after him. "Percy!" I shrieked, storming into the kitchen with vengeance. "You are _so _dead!"

"This is _not_ my fault," he said, sticking the bucket in the cabinet under the sink. "You need to get up earlier."

I quickly calculated how many times I could hit him for this—eight, maybe nine if I aimed right—but then decided sparring really wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of the morning. "Whatever," I stated, "but next time you do that, you _will_ pay."

"What'd I miss?" Nico said, sliding into the room on his socks. He stopped himself by crashing into the counter and then started hopping from one foot to the other like he was ready for a monster attack.

I shoved Nico away from the fridge and pulled open the door. "Leila wouldn't get up so I found a very effective way to get her out of bed," Percy told Nico with a smirk.

"And by 'effective,'" I muttered, getting out the orange juice, "he means dumping a bucket of ice water all over me."

"Well, it worked," Percy said, grabbing a cup from the cabinet behind his head and tossing it to me. "So yeah, it was effective."

"Dude!" Nico laughed and high-fived my brother. "You should have warned me! I would have dug out my camera!"

I pulled out some juice and then practically threw the carton back into the refrigerator. "And what would you have done with the video, Nico?"

"Blackmail," he stated.

I rolled my eyes. It was way too early for this. "Shut up," I told him. "My bed is soaked."

"Then you should wake up earlier," Annabeth joined in as she leaned against the counter next to her boyfriend.

"Traitor," I accused her.

She shrugged and kissed my brother on the cheek. Percy grinned like an idiot and kissed Annabeth on her head.

Nico and I faked gagged while Annabeth rolled her eyes.

"We should go," she stated loudly, packing up her bag—probably got up early to get a head-start on homework or something—and throwing it over her shoulder.

Nico groaned. "Already? We have tons of time!"

"Yeah, come on," I agreed, putting my cup in the sink. "It's only 7:15."

Annabeth nodded once, like she expected this argument—she probably had, but you can't blame us for trying, right?—and carefully explained her plan for the morning. "Yes, but if we get attacked on the way," she reasoned, "that's going to really make us late if you plan to leave—"

"Fine, whatever," I interrupted. I always tried to avoid Annabeth's possible half-hour explanation of what could go wrong, but today, I was especially on edge. High school did that kind of stuff to me, I guess. I shuddered and reached for my backpack.

"Oh, no. We had a bet, remember?" Nico reminded me with an evil glint in his eyes. "You have to carry a purse today since you lost."

"You were serious?" I tried. I knew there was no way I was getting out of this, but the thought of carrying around a purse all day seemed like a total waste of energy. I mean, come on! When you're attacked by monsters almost everyday, you need to be prepared—and what if a monster attacks us? What the heck was I supposed to do with a purse?

"Nice try," Nico told me while Percy nearly died of laughter. "Go find a purse."

"I don't own a purse," I said smugly.

He frowned then smiled. "Maybe Annabeth can lend you one," he said, gesturing towards a suddenly offended daughter of Athena.

"You really think I own a purse?" she asked accusingly.

Nico shrugged, unfazed by Annabeth's tone. "It was worth a try," he said. I mentally did a happy dance—no purse for me!—but then sobered up when I realized Nico would probably come up with something equally as annoying.

"Well, actually, I do have an orange one my stepmom gave me," Annabeth—I wasn't sure whether to thank her or kill her—offered. "I've never used it, though."

"You're using that one," Nico instructed, jabbing me in the ribs. I sighed. A deal is a deal, and we all took our bets pretty seriously, so there was no way out of this.

I reluctantly started back toward the bedrooms when I remembered my own bet. I whirled around with a smirk. "Annabeth, aren't you forgetting something?" I taunted, with a glance toward her sneakers.

"What—?" she stopped with wide eyes.

"Heels," I stated, pointing at her shoes. "You have to wear them."

She sighed and slowly dragged herself over to the bedrooms with me. "I can't believe you're making me do this," she stated, slipping off her sneakers.

"Hey," I objected. "I wouldn't be carrying a purse today if it wasn't for you."

"Trust me, Nico would have found a purse one way or another," she promised.

I laughed and grabbed the only pair of heels the two of us owned as she searched around for her one and only purse. Okay, maybe we were pretty pathetic when it came to completely-girly-teenage stuff—one pair of heels and one purse? Probably not normal—but can you really judge us? After all, we spent our summer saving the world.

"Here we go," I said slyly, pulling out a pair of four-inch flowered heels and holding them up. "Aww, they even match your outfit."

"Well, so does your purse," Annabeth countered tossing me her orange purse.

I scoffed, "_My_ orange purse? I am not keeping this thing."

Annabeth laughed and strapped the heels to her feet. "At least I'm almost as tall as Percy now," she commented, spinning around.

"That's the spirit," I teased.

"I want something to drink," I commented, tossing some drachmas and emergency nectar into the stupid purse. "Want to go to Starbucks since we have so much extra time?"

"Hoping you would say that," she agreed. "I could go for something."

"No boys," I told her.

She smiled. "Of course not."

Within the last two weeks, Annabeth and I started these special girls-only trips to the nearest Starbucks. It started about two days after we got back from camp. Living in a closed-up space with two teenage boys you're related to can really wear you down. Now, I grew up with a twin brother, but after he gets a girlfriend and your cousin moves in things can get a bit… crazy. (Percy and I once had a fight so big, our mom refers to it as "The Great Blender Incident of 2011.") Our mom and stepdad were cool about letting two more teenagers move in, but that's not all that surprisingly. Our mom has never turned down a kid in need, especially not Annabeth or Nico.

Anyways, one night at about ten-thirty, Annabeth suggested we just get out of the house for a while since I was ready to murder Percy with fire and dance on his ashes. The two of us ended up sending about two hours just talking at Starbucks and ever since, we've gone there to get overpriced drinks and have some time away from boys.

* * *

><p>"Talked to Will lately?" Annabeth asked, taking a cautious sip of her tea—"Caffeine before school?" she said when I suggested she should get coffee. "You <em>are<em> crazy."—while we left Starbucks.

"Actually, yeah," I said, running my fingers through my long hair. "He called me last night to wish me good luck with school."

"That's good," she nodded, fighting a smug-looking smile.

"Actually, I was really surprised," I admitted, biting my lip.

Annabeth snorted. "Why? You two _are_ dating."

_Sort of,_ I corrected her in my head. Yes, I liked Will and yes, he liked me back, but we had agreed that it wouldn't be a pressured relationship or anything. We're both just too close as friends for things to get weird. "See, we never talked about what we were going to do after I left camp," I explained, rolling my Cherry Coke bottle over and over in my hands. "We both sort of avoided that subject."

"When he called you last night," Annabeth started in her most wise tone, "did he ask you what you had been doing?"

"Yes," I said slowly, waiting for her to get to the point. "But I asked him that too."

"Why? Afraid he had been hanging out with some Aphrodite girls while you were gone for the winter?" she teased, knowing exactly what I had been thinking.

I hit her on the arm but still laughed. "Oh, please. We only dated for a few weeks."

"You mean you've only _been dating_ for a few weeks," she corrected with a wink.

Sometimes, I still couldn't believe how funny and carefree Annabeth was. It had taken me almost five years to get to know her this well, and now, we didn't hold back. "You're nuts," I told her, shaking my head.

"Me?" she protested. "All right, let's compare how nuts you think I am to every crazy stunt you and Percy have pulled over the last few years around the U.S.—"

"Okay, okay," I stopped her, knowing who would this fight. "I get it."

Annabeth gave one simple nod and brushed some unruly curls out of her eyes.

"Are you still planning to get your hair cut?" I said, tugging on the end of her blonde hair.

"Should I?" she replied absentmindedly, drinking more of her tea.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "It's your hair."

She raised her eyebrow. "Are you ever going to cut your hair?"

"Probably not," I said, swinging me hair back and forth so it brushed against my ribs.

"It's just going to keep getting longer and longer," Annabeth warned in a mocking tone. "You can barely deal with it being this long. What are you going to do when it's down to your knees?"

I smirked and answered her as we walked up Goode High School's front steps. "Get a haircut," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "How about when you get a haircut, so will I."

"Deal," I agreed.

Annabeth quickly finished the rest of her tea. She tossed it in the nearest trash can. "I'm going to go find Percy," she said.

"I am not going into that building until I have to," I stated, taking a seat on one of the steps.

She laughed. "Bye, Leila."

"See you," I called.

It was still a little strange to be getting along with Annabeth after the past few years of fighting but we became shockingly close a couple months ago. When Percy and Annabeth finally started dating, I wasn't surprised, but what did surprise me, was how happy Percy suddenly was. I had never seen him that happy and just like that—I liked whoever caused him that much happiness. (AKA: Annabeth Chase.)

She and my brother were really happy and now we were like sisters. Besides Rachel, Annabeth is the only girl best friend I've had since elementary school. I don't usually have time to make friends, but it was different with Annabeth.

After years of training together, I already knew her strengths, weaknesses, and everything that irritated her. On the other hand, I couldn't have been able to tell you her favorite color or even what schools she had tried to go to in the past.

Now I'm pretty sure I'd be able to write a long, very embarrassing biography on her life. Although, if I ever tried to publish it, she would probably write one about me, then I'd definitely regret it. We know just about everything there is to know about our lives.

Oh, except her relationship with Percy—that was the last thing I ever wanted to know about. He's my brother! That stuff is just gross.

Percy appeared next to me. "Hello, my dear sister," he said, sitting down next to me.

"Speak of the devil and the devil saw appear," I muttered under my breath as he got comfortable on the steps.

"What?"

"Nothing," I told him, knowing he'd totally kick my butt in sparring later if I made fun of him. "What'd you want?"

"I'm looking for Annabeth," he said. "Have you seen her?"

I nodded. "Yep. She just went inside looking for you."

"Cool," he stated but didn't make any move to leave.

I sighed, figuring it would be less painful just to get this over with. "What else?"

"Well, I was wondering if you wanted to share..." he trailed off gazing at my Cherry Coke.

"Yeah, right," I scoffed. "You dumped water on my head this morning, why would you expect me to share with you? Go bother your girlfriend."

"It's not like _you_ got wet!" he protested. "Besides, I would got bother Annabeth, but I can't find her."

"What a shame," I commented dryly.

"It is," he nodded seriously. "And it is not my fault you were up most of the night talking to Will—"

"Coming from you," I interrupted, "who didn't come to bed until about two in the morning."

"I was—"

"—too busy kissing Annabeth to realize how late it had gotten," I finished for him with a smirk.

He blushed then mirrored my smirk. "Yep. That's right."

I punched him in the arm. "Don't tell me these things!"

He laughed. "Then don't act like such a know it all."

"Whatever," I snapped. "Just leave me in peace without the awful mental images you put in my head."

"If you'd had just given me some of your soda then I wouldn't have to put such awful images in your head," Percy smiled.

I sighed and handed him my drink. "I'm done anyways. You can have the rest of it."

"'was going to finish it anyway," he shrugged, draining the bottle.

"Jerk," I muttered loud enough for him to hear.

Before Percy could say anything else, the first bell rang signally the start of another school year.

Percy groaned. "I hate school. We shouldn't even have to go to school."

"Come on, it won't be _that_ bad," I said, hyped on soda and probably being way too optimistic. "We shouldn't even have to worry about monster attacks this year. They're all in Tartarus or smart enough to stay away from us."

"I'm just saying this whole thing isn't very fair," he grumbled while we headed into the school.

"Face it. We might be heroes _there_ but this…" I paused and sighed, thinking of Olympus. "This is high school," I finished grimly. "You've crushed the small hopes I had for this year," I informed my brother with a frown. "Thanks so much."

"Nah, it won't be so bad," he said, changing his mind.

"You're just saying that because you remembered you have most of your classes with Annabeth," I criticized, pushing my way through the crowded hallway.

"Yeah," he said, following close behind me, "but I think that's okay. Speaking of classes, I have Art first."

"With Annabeth," I added, shoving past a group of loud, giggling girls.

Percy sneaked around in front of me to avoid the girls who had actually started jumping up and down in excitement—what the heck was wrong with mortals these days? "You know me well," he said, grinning.

I laughed. "Too well."

"Thank you, my darling sister for the drink but I must say farewell. My maiden awaits me," he gave me an obnoxious kiss on the cheek and turned for his class.

I swiped the back of my hand over my cheek. "Gross, Percy!" He turned around and gave me a deep bow, laughing the whole time.

"You'll pay for that, Percy," I murmured under my breath as I walked off toward my History class.

* * *

><p>My morning was spent in an inaccurate History class, very flawed Greek class with my brother, a headache most people call Math class, and finally a Biology class with Annabeth.<p>

"Hello, my name is Mr. Peterson," the teacher introduced once everyone was seated and had textbooks as heavy as bricks.

"This semester in Biology," he continued, "we'll be studying the oceans."

I couldn't quite contain the laughing fit that gripped me at that second. If only this teacher knew how easy this semester would be for me! Apparently, Annabeth was thinking along the same lines, because a short laugh escaped her too before she caught herself.

Mr. Peterson turned a critical eye toward the two of us. "Something funny?" He asked condescendingly.

I could barely open my mouth without cracking up but I managed a pathetic, "No, sir."

* * *

><p>As soon as class was over, Annabeth and I rushed out of the classroom.<p>

"Why can't I stop laughing?" I demanded, as my sides started hurting from laughter.

"Two—reasons," Annabeth replied between her own fits of laughter. "First: you had soda for breakfast—and that's never a good idea. Second: these classes are so boring, they're funny!"

"I never thought I'd live to see the day a daughter of Athena would tell me learning was boring," I said as my laughter subsided.

"I haven't learned a thing," she huffed. "I knew all of this."

"What classes did you this morning?" I asked.

"Art with Percy, Math and English alone, then Biology with you."

"You're just lucky you haven't had Greek yet," I told her. "It's so bad, it's not even funny."

She groaned. "Great. Another class to look forward too."

"Well, I've got to go to Art," I said, pushing away from the wall I had leaned against for support.

"And I've got History," Annabeth sighed.

The two of us turned and headed for our classes.

* * *

><p>Art turned out to be pretty easy. All the teacher wanted us to do was paint or draw something for today.<p>

It only took me a second to come up with something then I went over and took some brushes and blue, purple, silver, and green paint from one side of the room.

I caught a few people staring at me with doubtful expressions. All of them were eyeing my long hair as if they expected me to cover it with different colored paints. I sighed and snatched a hair tie out of my bag.

I expertly swung my hair into a perfect ponytail in a total of about two seconds. A boy who had been staring at me a few seats away, almost fell off his chair in shock. _Not even my record time_, I thought wryly.

Over the years, I had been in enough fights and battles that I actually became used to the sudden, unexpected need to pull my hair out of my eyes. So, long story short, it was easy to deal with all of my hair.

By the time class was over I had almost finished my picture while also managing to avoid getting any paint on my clothes—or hair. Image that!

"Ms. Jackson, this is amazing," the teacher complimented, looking at my painting.

I tensed and quickly scanned him up and down. He was slightly overweight man with a receding hairline, probably in his late forties. He didn't seem like much of a threat—and Annabeth would have warned me if she sensed a monster. I smiled, not completely relaxing. "Thanks."

"Do you paint a lot?" he asked, stepping close to examine the picture. "Your technique is superb!"

"I've only ever painted a few times," I admitted, "but my mom is a bit of an artist so maybe I get it from her."

He nodded, and hummed in approval. "Did you have a certain place in mind when you painted this?"

I scanned my painting. It was a low, stone fountain with silvery blue water flowing down the sides. It was the fountain that my dad had put in our Camp Half-blood cabin a few years ago as a gift for Percy and I. Of course, Percy had destroyed it by cutting it in half, but I'd never forget what it looked like. "No," I lied.

"You did this free hand, correct?"

"I didn't draw anything before I started painting, if that's what you mean," I said, hoping I didn't sound as clueless as I felt.

"Yes, well, I'm impressed. You need a very steady hand to paint this well freehand and it seems you have that skill." He nodded and wandered off to go check another student's work.

"Nothing like five years of demigod training to give you a nice steady hand," I mumbled painting some more.

* * *

><p>"Finally," Annabeth sighed when I met her after Art.<p>

"What? You didn't enjoy your lovely History class?" I teased.

"Well, that was the best class I've been to all day but it was still pretty bad—ouch!" she complained running into someone who was walking the opposite direction.

"Watch it," I told the kid, pushing him away from her. "We're walking over here!"

"Oh, I saw you," the boy flirted with a glance toward Annabeth skinny jeans, and my tanned legs.

"We have boyfriends," Annabeth informed him with a dangerous light in her eyes that promised trouble.

I confidently pushed my hair back. "And defensive bothers who will kick—"

"Well, they shouldn't let you wander around without protection then, should they?" the boy smirked cocky. "Maybe I should take of you two till then."

"Who said we needed protection?" I demanded, reaching for my dagger.

"Maybe you shouldn't," Annabeth deadpanned, dragging me away from the polo-wearing idiot.

"Come on," I objected. "One little punch won't put him in the hospital, but if aimed right, I might be able to knock out a few teeth."

"Pushing him so hard he would lose teeth? Yeah, that would put him in the hospital," she told me.

"It's not my fault the guy is a wimp," I grumbled, releasing the hold on my dagger.

"Forget it," she advised while we walked into the Cafeteria.

I scanned the room for Percy and Nico. Thanks to the pervert who decided to hit-on two girls at once, they must have gotten to the Cafeteria first.

"There," Annabeth said, pointing toward a table in a corner of the lunchroom. "Get in line, okay? I'm going to see what the boys want to eat."

"Fine," I huffed, "but tell them if it takes up more than two trays, they're getting their own food." Percy and Nico weren't just teenage boys, they were demigod teenage boys—that pretty much means they ate about twice as much as normal teenagers. Although, at least the boys got away with eating all that food. Try explaining to a mortal why you—an average looking teenage girl—can eat enough to food for an army, but never gain any weight. Monster training—definitely the best diet ever.

Annabeth laughed and nudged me toward the line. "I will."

A minute later, she returned with a long look on her face. "I am not getting all that food," she stated.

I snickered. "They should get their own food anyway."

"I'll get some," she shrugged, "but I don't even have enough limbs to carry all the food they want."

"Careful, they might eat your limbs if they don't get enough food," I joked.

Annabeth rolled her eyes and started grabbed a tray.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Nico and Percy familiar black hair easily, but there was something else. One of the girls I had seen staring at me in Art class was standing at the end of the table with another girl by her side.

The worse part was, I was across the room and I could clearly see she was flirting. And if I could, Annabeth definitely could.

I nodded to the girl. "Who's that?"

"She wasn't there a minute ago," Annabeth stated.

I was pretty sure she was dangerously close to running across the room and killing them—and I probably would've helped—but I decided to spare us the paperwork. "Get me something—a Coke—will you?" I asked, still staring at across the room.

She nodded and stiffly turned around to grab an apple from off the counter.

I made my way over to the table and swiftly slid into the seat next to Percy, cutting off whatever the one of girls was saying.

"Percy!" I said quickly. Picking the first thing that came to my head, I started talking fast enough to keep the other girls from saying anything in between. "Oh my gods! You are never going to believe what we're studying in Biology! Go on try to guess! Never mind. Let's face it, you won't guess right. It's the ocean."

Of course I knew Percy already had Biology class by now—but I couldn't think of anything else to say! Luckily, he was smart enough to keep from questioning my actions. He laughed knowingly and shook his head.

"Of course," Nico sulked, "you get the ocean, and I get atoms. How can they even be proved that they're really? No one has actually ever seen an atom."

I made a note to thank Nico for the help later—even though he probably had no idea he was helping—and I was about to keep talking when another voice spoke up. It was voice that made Percy's face light up and me sigh in relief.

"That's because scientists haven't been able to make a microscope strong enough," Annabeth said, taking a seat across from Percy. A disarming smile was poised on her lips, but her eyes warned anyone who had seen her in fight that she _was_ dangerous.

I leaned against the bench and smirked, wondering why I ever had problems with this girl.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: And the story begins. Ha-ha, this will be funnn)**


	2. Phase 2

**(A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I mean that in a totally, awesomely, not-even-being-able-to-put-how-amazing-you guys-are-into-words way! Sorry it took me a while to update, I got my wisdom teeth out... yeah, well...**

**Okay, for some new people here are some things you should know about me:**

**-I update whenever I finish a chapter and the last chapter has had time to be read. {My updates are sometimes really good, sometimes bad. It depends on how much extra time I have. Not to mention the awful writer's block I get every other week :P}**

**-I will not be switching POVs during this story. {It's just not really my thing. First of all, that doesn't make a lot of sense because the reason I have this story is because I wrote it the first time from the snobby mortal's POV. Second of all, it's just not really my thing to have a little bubble in the corner telling you which POV that certain chapter is in. If you want, I can put a little 'LPOV' at the top of each chapter but I'm kinda hoping you'll all remember…}**

**-I'm nuts. {Yeah… see my author's notes may get a bit 'crazy', oh and I like to ask random questions at the end of each chapter! I don't have a reason, and you not required to answer [duh!] but if you don't answer, neither do I. Ha-ha :]}**

**Without any more super-long-and-boring author's notes may I present: Phase 2.)**

* * *

><p><span>Phase Two<span>

As soon as the food touched the table, any concentration the boys possessed was shot to Hades. The four of us immediately started divided up the food because the rule was if it wasn't claimed, anyone could eat it.

"Mine," I told Percy, grabbing the Coke from him.

"You better share," he warned me.

"Oh, don't worry I will," I promised. "I don't any awful images in my head while I'm trying to eat."

He grinned. "No, you don't."

"A'hem," someone cleared their throat loudly, trying to get our attention.

I scowled. I was hoping the girls had taken the hint and left when we had all started ignoring them, but I guess not. I turned and gazed the girl standing at the end of our table.

She had a heavily make-upped face and tan that was obviously fake from the slightly orange tint her skin had. Her brown hair was streaked with light highlights that were an insult to blonde hair everywhere. The girl's tight, lacey top had ridden up a little, revealing a long, black belly button ring with a Playboy bunny hanging from the chain. Then her skirt was so short, I was surprised we couldn't see her underwear. That is, _if_ she was wearing any.

Overall, she looked like a classic mortal drooling for attention that we could not give her. I hated this girl instantly.

All right, all right, I swear I'm actually a nice person. No, I am not a morning person. Yes, I might try to hospitalize any guy who tries to hit-on Annabeth. And obviously, I will hate any girl who will even think about flirting with my brother—actually, that might have been why I hated Annabeth for so long, but not the point right now! "Can we _help _you?" I demanded, trying to get my brain to focus.

She flipped her hair and as she ran her hand along the edge of her hip, subtly pushing her shirt sideways. I suddenly realized how her top how ridden up so high. "Like I was saying—," she said in an not-so-subtle offended voice, "My name is Cara."

The other girl stepped forward. "And my name's Sophie."

Unlike Cara, Sophie seemed to be a little less of a needing brat. This girl was wearing a dress that stopped right before her knees with white flats and barely any make-up. Her bright blonde hair seemed natural enough and she looked a little nicer, but judging by her expression—she meant business.

"Okay…" Nico took one look at them and said, "Bye."

I was really going to have to thank Nico for his help later, but unfortunately this girl seemed to be about as smart as she looked, because she just flashed her super-white teeth, ignoring our obvious dis-interest. "Wait, where are from?"

What was this—a cocktail party on her Daddy's yacht?! This was _high school_ for crying out loud! But where are we from? Good question. I'm not really sure. But I do know I'm from somewhere where people can tell when they're not wanted.

"Somewhere smart," I muttered. Percy tried to hide a smile out of politeness, but I knew it showed through a little from the glare Cara shot me.

She glowered at me. "What is your name?" she asked in a sweet voice as if I couldn't see her mentally shooting daggers at my skull.

I stared right back at her without evening attempting to answer her question. I was pretty good with glares, but I suddenly wished Thalia were here. That daughter of Zeus was the queen of glaring contests.

"Here," Annabeth said, grabbing the apple off the tray. "Think fast!" she threw the apple me and caught easily.

I shook my head and chewed on the apple while Annabeth introduced us. I wanted to smack her, but I knew she must have plan since she was smiling like a five year old on Christmas morning.

"I'm Annabeth. This is Nico," she motioned toward Nico. Then to us, "And the pests across the table are Percy and Leila."

Everyone frowned. I reached over and hit Annabeth in the arm. "Shut up," I growled toward her. I did not wanting this girl knowing my name! I mean, I could smell crazy on her! She didn't need to know who I was!

Finally the bell rang. All four of us collected our stuff and away from the table probably before the Slut or her ignorant follower knew what happened.

Since a collective gym class was next, we all gradually headed in that direction while talking and shoving people aside to get through the hallway.

"You know a guy hit-on Annabeth earlier," I told Percy.

He instantly snatched up his girlfriend's hand making it obvious he didn't like the idea of anyone else even thinking about _'his girl'_. "When?"

"He hit-on you, too," Annabeth protested. She threw me a look that said, _Why did you start this?_

"On our way to lunch," I answered my brother, completely ignoring Annabeth.

Percy's eyes narrowed. "Who was it?"

"This is ridiculous!" Annabeth interrupted. "He hit on Leila, too!"

Her boyfriend shrugged. "Leila can take care of herself."

"And I can't?" she challenged.

"Bad choice of words," Nico muttered.

He blushed. "Not what I meant. Of course you can."

"Then what _did_ you mean?" she demanded, pulling her hand from his.

By now, they had caused enough attention that some people passing us in the hallway were starting to watch. This isn't the first—and it definitely won't be the last—time Percy and Annabeth have argued since they became a couple—some days Nico, Thalia, and I like to joke they spend more time arguing than kissing—but usually the two of them are more subtle about it in public. "Guys," I murmured, trying to cut in and tell them to keep it down.

"I just don't worry about Leila being with guys as much as I do with you," Percy admitted, flushing a very girly pink color.

"Both of you are ridiculous! And wow. Thanks a lot, Percy," I muttered.

"Hey," he told me, "all you have to do is tell me if you ever need help beating up some pervert dumb enough to try something on you."

"And if that happens," Annabeth added, taking Percy's hand again—he was now forgiven, "Not only do you have Percy, you've got me, Will, Nico, and possibly all the Hunters coming after _that_ moron."

I laughed while Nico and Percy nodded seriously in agreement. "Well, if a guy ever tries anything on you, Annabeth, you'd have me, too."

"Oh, I know," she said confidently. "You almost took down that guy just because he bumped into me. That was even before he opened his mouth."

"Good girl," Percy told me with a pat on my head.

"What am I, a dog?" I asked, pushing his hand off the top of my hair.

"Speaking of dogs," Nico spoke up, "who's taking care of Mrs. O'Leary if we're all here?"

"Travis and Conner said they'd watch her," I said, pushing open the gym doors.

"Which means she'll be dead or be locked up in a pound in no-where's-ville Iowa by next week," Percy stated.

"Shut up," I snapped, defending my awesome—yet agreeably crazy—friends. "Have _some_ faith in them."

Annabeth sighed. "Hate to say it, but Percy's probably right."

I huffed. "I know. This is why I also asked Will to keep an eye on the two of them to make sure they don't try to use Mrs. O'Leary for anything… stupid." And by stupid, I meant taking her for a joy-ride to Mexico so they can finally effectively "cross the boarder".

Nico shrugged. "Good enough."

I shook my head as Annabeth and I retreated into the Girl's changing rooms.

"Any chance you brought that top with the—" a shirt landed on my head. "Thanks, Annabeth," I said while I pulled the gray T-shirt over my black tank top.

"No problem. I figured you'd forget your T-shirt," she replied slipping a striped tank top of her head.

"Well, yeah. I did," I frowned. "That doesn't mean you'd have to _assume _that I'd forget."

"All right, all right," Annabeth relented. "I'll let you forget all by yourself next time, Leila."

"Nah," I shrugged. "I'd rather have clean clothes after gym."

"Of course you would," she sighed and shut her locker. "You can redeem yourself by loaning me a hair tie, though."

I laughed a little and grabbed two hair ties from my bag. "Sure."

We both quickly pulled our hair into ponytails. "Ready?" Annabeth asked.

I shut my own locker. "Let's go."

The two of us came out of the locker room just as the coach started giving directions. "All right, we're going to soccer today." he told everyone.

"They better not be assigned teams," Nico muttered when we joined the boys over by a pair of very old looking bleachers.

"Make your teams! There must be four people on each team," he continued. "No more. No less. Show me what you've got!"

"That answers that question," Annabeth smiled, relaxing back on the bleachers.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Looks like we've got our team all set."

"Uh-oh," Nico stated darkly.

"What—" Annabeth stopped and her expression screwed up like she was trying not to scream.

I glanced behind me to see none other than Cara flirting with Percy _again_. I sighed. I had faced several monsters that were smarter than this. This chick was proving to be a bigger problem then I had originally thought.

Whatever he said to her made her face fall into a pout, but Percy just turned around and walked over to us shaking his head.

"What did _she_ want?" I asked, even though I already had a pretty actuate guess.

"She wanted me to be on her team for soccer," Percy confirmed.

Annabeth glanced at me and narrowed her eyes. I knew she was telling me that she didn't like them having even _thinking_ near Percy. I rolled my eyes in response, telling her that no one really liked them at all—near Percy, or not—and I highly doubted they could _think_ at all.

Winning soccer was going to be easy, getting rid of the band of snobs that seem to have latched onto Percy… _that_ was going to be a little harder.

* * *

><p>Soccer turned out to be so much easier than I thought. Even though none of us had really played before, soccer wasn't any harder than what we did at Camp Half-Blood so we were pretty good.<p>

We had beaten every team on the fields and were getting some pretty crazy looks because of it. Apparently, some of these kids were on the school's team and had been playing before they could crawl.

Personally, I'd seen Aphrodite girls play harder than some of these kids, but if they wanted to believe they had a meaningless skill of kicking a ball around on a field, I wasn't about to tell them differently.

The last team we beat happened to be the snobs that had interrupted our lunch and tried to convince Percy to be on their team.

"That was fun," Nico remarked while we all sat down on the bleachers.

"I guess so," I said. "I just wanted… I don't know."

"A bit more of a challenge?" Annabeth offered, looking disappointed with the lack of competition.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I definitely wanted more of a challenge."

"I think we can assume this year will be pretty easy," Percy commented, leaning back against the bleachers.

Then, after summoned by Jackson bad luck, the Snobs appeared. Cara immediately sat down next to Percy like the rest of us went even here while the other blonde girl—Sophie, I think—started talking.

"OMG!" she said—not kidding! She actually said OMG—much too loudly. "You all were so good!"

"Yeah, that was fun," Cara said with a weird half-smile-mostly-facial-twitch smirk type thing toward my brother.

There was a third girl with dark brown hair standing next to Sophie that smartly kept her mouth shut and avoided eye contact with us. I mentally nodded my approval and decided that she would be spared if we ended up killing Cara and her blonde friend in the night.

"Thanks," Percy said uncomfortably. He cleared his throat and visibly shifted away from Cara. Trying to be polite, while also trying to get her to take the hint, nice one, Percy—but not good enough.

Annabeth was supporting her creepy smile again. "Yeah," she said. "Thanks."

She directed a pointed glance toward Cara, than looked back and met my gaze. I understood her message clearly enough: _Get her off. _I gave her a slight nod in reply, agreeing that this was too much for one day.

Thank the gods Athena always has a plan. Now, it was time for Cara to the picture of what—and who—she was messing with.

I swung my feet up onto the edge of the bleacher bench in front of me. I was going to have to move fast to get this to work, but this slut couldn't be any faster than some monsters we'd faced. Unless she _was_ a monster, then we'd have an excuse to kill her.

"Where did you learn to play like that?" Cara continued, crowding Percy's personal space even more.

_Far enough,_ I thought then aimed a perfect kick right at the base of her back. Not hard enough to really hurt her, but hard enough to get her butt away from my brother. As she tumbled off the bench, I climbed down into her seat next to Percy.

"Cara!" Her friends fretted, reaching down and helping her get up. Annabeth reached behind Percy and gave me a well-deserved high-five.

Cara pointed a perfect French manicured nail at me. "You kicked me!" she screeched.

I snorted at her statement. Anyone with eyes could see I had kicked her! "Maybe I did," I mocked, waiting for her to snap.

She met my icy glare and garbled through clenched teeth, "That's okay. Now if I could just have my seat back—"

"Sorry," I said with obviously fake sincerity, "but no."

"Give me my seat back!" she demanded in a whiny voice.

If she really thought she was getting her seat back, she was dumber then she looked (and that's saying something). "I said no you ignorant—"

The coach stopped me. "Is there a problem here?" he asked, tapping his finger against his clipboard impatiently.

"Sir," Cara griped immediately. "She kicked me off the bench and then took my seat!"

The coach stopped tapping and turned toward me. "Leila, is this true?"

I put on a perfect surprised face and stated, "I have no idea what she's talking about, sir."

"She's lying!" Cara told him when she had stopped gaping at me like a fish. "She kicked me!"

The coach looked between us, clearly not sure whose side to take. Cara was new but the Jackson were known to cause trouble so either one of us could be lying. "Stop fooling around," he finally said. "We're almost done gym, so no fighting. Separate yourselves if you have too." He walked away muttering something about regretting not continuing law school.

"Anyways, where did you learn to play soccer?" Sophie repeated with an eager expression. For now, she meant no harm.

I wasn't sure how to answer that question. Where had we learned the rules of soccer? Other schools. Where did we get the reflexes to play so well? Oh, nothing weird. Just you know, fighting monsters. The usual things we teenagers do in the summer and sometimes on our winter breaks.

"We learned at our summer camp," Annabeth responded innocently. I hid a smile into my hand; these girls were more clueless then they realized.

Cara snorted. "Really?" she asked, doubting Annabeth's answer.

"Yeah, it's where we met each other, or at least it's where Nico and I met Percy and Leila," she corrected.

Sophie eyebrows scrunched together, "You knew each other _before_ you went to camp?"

I nodded and waited for the obvious to hit them. I might have grown my hair out, but Percy and I still looked almost exactly alike. If they couldn't see that we were twins, they were worse than a little stupid, they were just plain unintelligent.

"Oh," Cara shook her head, obviously not seeing that relation between Percy and I. "That's cool."

A whistle sounded across the field. "All right, today was good," the coach announced. "I saw a lot of, eh, _effort_ out there. Anyways, go change and get to class."

The four of us ran up the back of the bleachers and jumped off the other side. We all ran for the locker rooms and got out again—changed in record time.

"Man, I am so done with those girls," Nico commented while checking his schedule for his next class.

I snorted. "At least you're not the one they're trying to seduce with their evil ways!"

"Shut up, Leila," Annabeth snapped taking Percy's hand.

"Oh, I was kidding," I said, throwing the dumb purse over my shoulder. "They'll get the message and leave us alone eventually just like everyone else."

"They better," Annabeth growled lightly under her breath.

Percy kissed her hand he was holding and changed the subject. "What classes do we have next?"

"I've got Art class," Nico sighed, tucking his papers away.

Annabeth gave me a long look. "I've got Greek."

I laughed a little. "Good luck with that. I have English, and Percy you have History."

"Hold up…" Nico hitched his bag higher up on his arm, "you have Percy's schedule?"

"Look, if he had it, he would lose it," I pointed out. "Annabeth would have it, but only I was allowed to take it from the office this morning since we share a last name."

"And DNA," Nico stated.

"Look, we're all going to be really late for class," Annabeth said. "So, can we just pick-up this conversation after school?"

We all headed in our separate directions, knowing we'd continue any started conversations later.

"Thank you for joining us, Ms. Jackson," my teacher noted when I opened my English classroom door.

"No problem, P—" I caught myself. "Mr. Blofis."

"Hmm," my stepdad observed me from across the room. "Just try not and let it happen again."

"No promises, sir," I said as I took my seat.

I wasn't unaware of the stares I was getting, but after years of the staring, gawking, and gaping, I've chosen to just ignore more or less everyone around me.

* * *

><p><strong>(So, the question:<strong>

**How many times do you think you've read the Percy Jackson series?**

**Last thing: for the inhabitants of the planet Earth that didn't read From the Outside- outfits for this story are linked on my profile page for one's enjoyment, if you will. Ha-ha oh my gosh, I love talking all weird.)**


	3. Phase 3

**(AN: I know it's been FOREVER since I updated, but sadly, it seems there is a world outside of my Percy Jackson fanfiction. And THAT world comes with a horrible thing called **_**Writer's Block**_** :P Anyways, I hope you guys like this chapter! Even if it did take me like 2 months to get it right… I own none of the original Percy Jackson ideas, by the way.)**

* * *

><p><span>Phase Three<span>

"Hey, Death Breath! Wait up!" I called. Several people standing in the near-empty hall turned or reacted to the name—werdos—but none them were who I was looking for.

"Hey, Leila," Nico said, emptying yesterday homework into his locker. "What'cha need?"

"Actually, nothing," I admitted, while I leaned against the wall next to his locker. "I just needed someone to talk to while Percy and Annabeth make-out before class."

He shuddered and shut his locker. "I understand."

I shrugged as we walked down the hall toward my own locker, "Yeah, well, it's better than them constantly screaming at each other."

"Amen," Nico agreed, nodding.

"Anyways," I continued, "they're going to some restaurant in center city for a date tonight, so it should be better after that."

Nico face got all funny looking, and I knew he was thinking of the possible danger. "Is that smart? I mean, monsters have sort of been after us since the war."

"Do you want to explain it Percy—or better yet—face Annabeth if we try to stop them?" I asked, shoving my way past a couple of laughing teenagers.

"Facing the wrath of an Athena child is definitely more dangerous," Nico decided, helping me shove the kids away.

When the two of us finally reached my locker, I was surprised to find Percy, Annabeth, and a very familiar looking girl in black. "_Thalia,_" I said in disbelief, recognizing the Hunter of Artemis while breaking into a crazy looking grin. "Oh my gods! I can't believe it!"

"Leila!" She said, smiling in her own Gothic-girly way. "Hey!"

Unlike Percy, I had gotten along with Thalia right from the start.

Okay, so that might be a bit of lie. It did take a few near-death experiences and arguments to get us to cooperate, but we really got along rather quickly.

"I can't believe you're here," I said in shock. As happy as I was to see her, she was supposed to be running around in the forest somewhere—not showing up at Goode High School looking like as other average Goth wearing shorts and a strange looking hair piece.

Thalia scowled and messed with her bracelet, as if considering whipping out her shield and spear to take down everything and every_one_ in sight. "Neither can I."

"You're almost as bad as Percy," I commented, knocking in the shoulder with a friendly punch. "Come on, it is not that bad!"

She raised an eyebrow, obviously wondering when I became so optimistic. "What?" I asked innocently. By everyone's expressions, I could tell they were not going to let this go but I shrugged. "It could be worse."

"I need to run to my locker before first period," Percy said, holding up a massive pile of books. "So can we walk that way if you guys are done being girls?"

Thalia grinned and ruffed Percy's hair. "You totally missed me."

I laughed and shut my locker, knowing she right. "He totally did."

"What's your first class?" Annabeth asked, twisting a curl around in her finger with her other hand securely in Percy's.

"Just a second," Thalia replied, digging around in her bag. "Let me find my schedule."

As we all watched Thalia's hopeless search, I eventually figured it was a lost cause. Thalia had never been good at keeping things in order—just look at her cabin for an example—so I was sure we'd be making an emergency trip to the office.

"Bet she lost it already," Nico said, echoing my thoughts.

"I don't know," I said, as she dug further down into her bag. "It's only the first _hour_. She'll probably lose it in first period."

"I give at the least 'til Lunch," Percy cut in while Thalia reached elbow-depth.

"Got it!" Thalia announced triumphantly, holding a very crumpled piece of paper out for us to see. "You stand corrected!"

Percy shrugged. "I still say you won't have it by lunch."

Annabeth rolled her eyes and took the schedule. "All right," she started in her battle-planning voice. "You have third period Biology with Percy, and fifth period History class with me. Then we all have Lunch and gym together. After that there's just Greek, which you also have with me."

"Cool," Percy started. "We're learning about the ocean in Biology, so that should be an easy class this year."

"Unless they get all their facts wrong like in Greek class," I remarked. "Then we're all screwed."

"Pretty much," Percy agreed, smiling and pulling open his locker.

"So Thalia, why the heck are you in high school?" I asked. Annabeth and Percy start struggling to fit everything inside his locker. I couldn't believe Percy had already managed to clutter up his locker, but hey, the boy had skills.

"Complications," Thalia stated, taking a few steps away from the lockers as some strange liquid started dipping from Percy's locker. She briefly tried to explain the high school situation—but was interrupted by Annabeth, who was yelling, "WHAT IS _THAT?!_" over and over again at Percy.

"All I need to do is spend a semester or two here, then I should be able to make up some excuse," Thalia finished, glancing back and forth between the locker and the mess that now covered most of the hallway floor.

"Um," I said, stepping away from the stuff and pushing Nico in front of me just in case anything from Percy's locker decided to attack. "Where are staying?"

"I'm not sure yet," she replied. "Artemis talked about maybe getting me an apartment or hotel room until the end of the semester, since I only need to stay—"

"No way," Percy interrupted, finally shutting his locker. "You're staying with us."

"Yeah," I agreed. "We've got plenty of room!"

Thalia threw us a writhing look. "Your mom already has for four teenagers to deal with. I highly doubt she wants another."

My brother snorted. "Thalia, my mom would take in the entire camp if she had the floor space."

"Look," I said, noticing the expression on her face, "at least come home with us so we can ask."

"Fine," Thalia caved. "But if there is even a little hesitation from your mom—"

"Yeah, yeah," Percy finished. "You can find somewhere else to stay."

The shrill sound of the bell abruptly interrupted our conversation and I'm 100% we all simultaneously groaned at the thought of class. It wasn't even 10AM and I was ready to quit. Who needs high school anyway? It's not I would actually be able to get in college!

"I've got math first," Thalia stated, scowling.

"At least you're near your classes," Nico grumbled. "I have to go all the way back down the hall."

"Then get going!" Annabeth told him waving a hand in the opposite direction.

"I'm going," Nico grumbled, hitching his bag up higher on his shoulder and heading away from us.

"My first class is near the math rooms, so I'll show you the way," Annabeth said while Thalia nodded.

"Meet you in Art," Annabeth told Percy, kissing his cheek.

Thalia made a small noise of disgust but Percy's smile was big enough for him, Thalia, and me so I guess it didn't really matter. I waved as Thalia and Annabeth made their down the hall and out of sight.

"And then there were two," I said, sighing.

Percy grinned and flicked my ear. "Where's your first class?" he asked as I batted his hand away from my head.

I pointed at the hallway going straight away from us. "All the way down that hall and to the left."

Percy frowned. "Aren't you going to be late?"

"Yep," I stated. "It's the second day so I figured I better knock the teacher's expectations down a bit."

"Leila, it's a miracle Paul managed to get us back into Goode for another year," he said. "It would probably be better if you took this more seriously."

"I know," I replied. "It's not like I'm skipping class, I'm just a little late. Sue me."

"I think I might," Percy told me seriously. I laughed and headed off toward my class.

* * *

><p>"Well, this sucks," Nico commented, flipping through his English book.<p>

"Let me see," Percy said, holding out his hand. After a few seconds of flipping pages and scanning of pages, my brother tossed back onto the table in front of us. "It's definitely written English."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Thalia said sarcastically, while Annabeth picked up the book.

"It's probably a Shakespeare," she said, studying the cover.

"It is," Nico confirmed. "I paid enough attention in class yesterday to know the teacher said something about starting with Shakespeare plays."

"You're probably starting with the famous ones, so we can pretty much assume this is Romeo and Juliet," Annabeth concluded.

"That sucks," Percy said, repeating Nico's words from earlier.

"Hold on," Annabeth said, "you said you paid attention in class yesterday, what did you do today?"

Nico blinked then said in a very confused voice, "I'm… not sure…"

"Okay," Thalia laughing in a bit of a nervous way, while moving her chair away from Nico. "Moving on."

"What are staring at?" I asked Percy, setting my hands on the table space in front of me.

"That sign," he answered, pointing at a poster hanging on the wall across the room. "I can't figure out what it says…"

"Oh my gods," I stated, gazing at the poster. "Please tell me I'm reading that wrong."

"Why?" Nico said, tossing his book aside and looking up. "What do you two think it says?"

"Does that say 'Old Foreseeing Urinals'?" Thalia blurted, staring at the sign in shock.

"That's what I see," I said, unable to stop my staring.

"Guys," Annabeth said through her laughter, "I'm pretty sure it says 'Lose Yourself in Reading'."

"Guess that makes more sense," Thalia admitted. "Since this is the library…" After that we all end up laughing so hard, the head librarian had to come over and tell us to stop because we were making too much noise.

"I'm going see what books we can actually read in this place," I said, pushing my chair away from our table.

"I'll come," Percy volunteered, standing up.

The two of us wandered around long enough to make my head spin, but eventually we made it over to the foreign language section. "Libraries," Percy huffed, searching along the walls for anything written in Greek. "These places should be re-named: 'Demigod's Worst Nightmare'."

"I don't think it's should be named our worst nightmare," I said, flipping open a book I was pretty sure was written in French. "Maybe our worst headache," I continued, shoving the French book back into place.

"All right, this place is officially named: A Demigod's Worst Headache Room… Place… Area…," he finished awkwardly.

"Forget it," I advised him.

"No problems there," Percy said, shaking his head.

"Here!" I announced a few minutes, pulling a book off the shelf, "Something written in Greek—_finally._"

"_Greek Mythology in its Original Form," _Percy said, reading the cover over my shoulder. "Why would they have this in a high school's library?"

"Who cares? It's good enough," I stated. Percy shrugged and we both went to find a place to sit.

After we were sitting in between two unused library (or The Demigod Worst Nightmare Room-Place-Area-Thing) book rows, we started reading. The pictures were probably the most offending part of it all. For the better part of six minutes, the two of us seriously considered cutting them out of the book, but in the end we decided the crazy librarian (The Demigod Worst Nightmare's Person-Guard-Nazi) we met earlier, wouldn't appreciate that.

"Go back!" I commanded my brother, trying to grab the book from his hands.

"Hold on!" he told me, moving out of my reach. "There," Percy said, opening to the page I wanted to see.

"There!" I repeated, pointing at the picture and paragraph I had been in the middle reading when my idiotic brother had turned the page.

"What about it?"

"Dad's married to Amphitrite, right?"

Percy's eyes narrowed, "Where are you going with this?"

"Guess who _Amphitrite's_ dad is," I stated, tapping the picture.

He glanced down and his eyes widen, "Oh, man, no wonder Nereus didn't want to help us."

"Yeah," I laughed bitterly. "We're the spawn of his son-in-law's not-so-hidden affair." Percy frowned a little, while I continued, "I can't believe Dad married Nereus's daughter!"

"I know," Percy responded, shivering. "When we saw Amphitrite that once, I couldn't even tell! That's so strange… and _wrong_," he added under his breath.

"I will never get the image of you trying to catch Nereus out of my head," I told Percy, remembering him tackling the Old Man of the Sea.

"Shut up," he mumbled, turning the page.

Too soon, the bell rang, indicating it was time for our next class; which in my case was English.

"Oh, man," Percy groaned, standing up. "I'm stiff!"

"We are definitely sitting at a table next time," I decided, stretching.

Percy nodded in agreement and we headed for the check-out.

The librarian (The Demigod Worst Nightmare's Person-Guard-Nazi) eyed off with a dangerous glare when we walked up to the desk. Both of us were pretty much used to adults hating us, but that didn't stop us from being as polite as we could. (Our mom had drilled manners into at a very early age. It's impossible to forget something that traumatic.)

"Hi," I said to the librarian. "Can we check-out a book?"

"You go to this school, don't you?" she asked snidely.

"Uh… yes…" I was almost sure that was a rhetorical question, but I had a bad habit of answering them anyway.

"Of course you can check out a book," she said, pushing her grasses higher up on her nose. "Do you have a certain book or do I have to guess what you want?"

"Oh, right," Percy said, handing the book over the counter to her. The Demigod Worst Nightmare's Person-Guard-Nazi raised an eyebrow when she saw the cover.

"We're studying Greek this year," I stated in an important voice—like it explained everything and I actually knew what I was talking about. The lady nodded and continued checking-out the book without any other questions.

"I'm going to go see where everyone went," Percy said as the lady took my ID card and finished checking out the book.

"And by 'everyone'," I said, "you mean Annabeth?"

"Yep," Percy confirmed with a smile. "Be right back with your bag."

"All right."

"Here you go," the librarian (The Demigod Worst Nightmare's Person-Guard-Nazi) said, handing over my ID and the book.

"Thank you," I told her. Percy came back with my things, and then I began my struggle to stuff the book down into the purse. The stupid thing wasn't big enough, darn it!

"I got to go," I said, once I was done. "I can't be late for English again."

"Well, I get an assigned current events partner in History today," Percy replied, shaking his head.

"Oh," I commented. "That's sound like… fun."

"More like torture."

"It's only the second day of school, Percy," I said. "Your teacher can't be that bad!"

"I wasn't talking about the teacher or even the project," he told me. "It's the partnering up part I'm worried about."

"Annabeth is going to school with us this year," I started, "does not give you the right to be unsocial-able."

"Can you guess who's in my History class?" he asked, staring at me like I was missing the whole point of this conversation.

"Wait," I said, picking up on the part embarrassed/frustrated/lost expression on his face, "_Cara_ is in your History class?"

Percy nodded slowly with a dark look. "And if they go by last names…"  
>"It's possible you guys could be partners," I realized. "Oh, man."<p>

"What if I am partners with her?" he continued in a slight panic. "I'd have to… like talk to her and stuff!"

I cursed. "Annabeth is not going to be happy about this."

"I know," Percy assured me. "That's why I didn't bring it up last night. I don't to tell her until I know for sure if that girl—"

"Cara," I filled in.  
>"—is my History partner!" he finished.<p>

"Good idea," I advised him. "Maybe you'll get lucky and score a guy as your partner."

"Maybe," Percy exhaled, thoroughly frustrated, "but when have we _ever_ been lucky?"

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: All right, so I guess I've read Percy Jackson nearly… twenty-something times? Yeah, I've read the whole series about twenty-four times than each book I've read separately… oh, man, I'm not counting that high! Ha-ha all right, next one:<strong>

_How many of you started to read a bunch of Greek Mythology after reading the Percy Jackson books?_

**Love hearing from you guys, and I'll try to update faster :])**


	4. Watching Among Them

**Complicated Disclaimer: We do not own any Percy Jackson or anything else that is Rick Riordan owns. I (Kimby) own the "idea" of Leila. _AnnabethLuna_ decided to give Annabeth a little fun. Awesome. Let's move on!**

* * *

><p><em>Watching Among Them<br>_Cara Kray is one mortal who is seriously testing my patience. She's ignorant. She's arrogant. Oh did I mention she's trying to steal my boyfriend/best friend? Typical. I bet Leila and Thalia would help me get rid of her. Nico did offer. Yeah, she's a goner. Percy Jackson is definitely mine. One-shots of From the Outside and Insiders Know All in Annabeth's POV written by AnnabethLuna

* * *

><p>This, my friends, is not a chapter—BUT is IS a series of one-shots of <em>From the Outside<em> and _Insiders Know All_ from Annabeth's POV written by _AnnabethLuna _(love her!). I am seriously blown away by how awesome these one-shots are. I get so excited every time I hear from Luna! I really like working with her! She's so fun! Haha :)

Anyway, I hope you all like this story as much as I do 'cause I really, really love it.

All Annabeth POV credit obviously goes to _AnnabethLuna. _She does a fabulous job at Annabeth and captures every scene perfectly! Here's a little part that I personally loved:

_"First of all, I'm much smarter than this mortal could ever hope to be. That was proven a long time ago. Secondly, my threats are never empty. That was the first thing anyone ever learned about me. And thirdly, she didn't care about anything aside from looks – who says I'm the same? I love Percy because we've been together through so much, because I understand him better than she would ever hope to, and because I care about so much more than his looks. So, sweetheart, I thought viciously, you've got another think coming."_

Isn't it awesome?! Yay! Haha! Anyway, go on over and thank _AnnabethLuna _for this story! She wrote Annabeth's POV—NOT me. Now, go and read!


	5. Phase 4

**I don't own Percy Jackson! (Or Annabeth or Nico or Thalia or Sally or Will or you know, anything besides the snobs and Leila...)**

THIS IS NOT A JOKE! IT'S ACTUALLY AN UPDATE! YOU KNEW?!

First shout-out goes to **_AnnabethLuna_**. She totally came along and kicked my butt back in line when it came to writing this story. Reasons why I stopped are on my profile, but hopefully, I'm back for good now. Sorry if I'm out of practice.

For all of you that were wondering: _NO_, I'm not dead. Second shout-out goes to **_AshleyDaughterofApollo_**_:_ You're right! I've totally ignored this story for like, forever. Totally MIA. Oh, and just so you know, your review made me laugh like a crazy person. Thank you! I think you're awesome, too ;)

Third shout-out goes to **_TheRealLeilaJackson _**(cool penname, haha) and anyone else who said something similar to her review: I MISSED YOU GUYS, TOO! That may sound a bit cliché or something, but I seriously did miss updating this story! You all deserve better, I know.

Next shout-out goes to **the people who reviewed** this story in the last year: I never stopped reading the reviews, and I never stopped wishing I could write more for you all! I'm back now and ready to update, though! If you've moved on, that's okay, I'll still love you forever! Here's a smile for you to take on your journey through life— :D

And my last and final shout-out goes **EVERYONE** who has stuck with me through this crazy year.

**This update is for you.**

* * *

><p><span>Phase Four<span>

The end of this torture could not come fast enough.

Paul had somehow managed not to call on me in class—I would totally thank him for that later—but my head still swirled with letters that refused to do anything even relatively helpful. Why couldn't everyone just learn Greek like normal people?

Wait, _normal_ people? Where had "normal" come from? Oh, no—I'm starting to think my mega-unnatural-reality is normal! _This is bad,_ I thought, letting my head drop down onto the desk with _THUMP._

"Hey," some accented-kid behind me whisper-yelled. "Are you okay?"

I turned and lifted my head just enough to see a girl with eyes the size of flying saucers. She was staring at me with those a big UFOs as if she had been watching me struggle through English for a while. Since she was sitting right behind me, I guess she had.

"I'm just not used to reading in English," I told her. "I'm out of practice."

She quickly stole a look toward the front, checking on the teacher's whereabouts, I'm sure, before nodding. "I understand. I moved to New York when I nine, but before that, I lived in Arizona. My family and I only ever spoke Spanish, you know? English was my worse subject for a long time. Are you new?"

_That explains her accent,_ I thought, admiring her honesty. "Nah. I've lived in Manhattan all my life," I told her. "I just never bothered learning the local language."

Thankfully, the bell rang, saving me from having to explain myself to the girl. She probably thought I mental anyway, but at least I wouldn't have to stick around and confirm it for her.

The hallways were full and practically buzzing with that end of the day freedom, but I refused to be shoved aside. I was quite proud of my elbowing abilities, and as Percy would say, "We _did_ grow up in New York City."

I was actually making pretty good time, considering I could barely see more than a foot in front of me, until some idiot shoved a boy so hard that her came flying into me and almost broke my nose. "This is madness!" the boy who had been shoved screamed. "You will all rot in Hades for this!"

"Whoa, Death Breath," I said, recognizing him. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Before either of us got swept aside again, I helped him regain his balance.

"I'm going to skin that guy alive!" Nico threatened, reaching into his backpack for his sword.

I grabbed his arm. "I don't think so," I told him, dragging him along with me. "We'll just find the others and leave the skinning to someone else, okay? Maybe tomorrow if the guy is still bothering you."

Nico let out a creepy chuckle. "Yes, tomorrow… that's perfect!"

"Gods, I was kidding, Nico," I said. "I would be in so much trouble if I let you skin someone alive."

"The world is full of people, Leila! No one is going to miss just one more person!"

"I'm pretty sure someone would notice," I deadpanned. "Now help me find the others!"

Nico snorted but stopped pulling against me. "_Thank_ you," I said, letting go of his arm. "You need to stop freaking out about everything. I mean, not everyone on the planet is a monster or someone trying to kill you, you know?"

He didn't reply so I stopped walking and figured I was about to be on the receiving end of a classic Nico-glare, but when I looked over my shoulder, he wasn't there.

I groaned and took off back down the hall. "Darn it, Nico," I growled.

* * *

><p>After literally running into Thalia and Annabeth, they both managed to help me calm Nico down. Annabeth had magical persuasive powers like that, I guess. My idea was just to knock him over the head a few times until he saw sense, and hey, Thalia liked my idea.<p>

After agreeing to meet back at our apartment, Thalia left—taking Nico with her so he couldn't go all crazy on the student body—to go and collect the things she had left in a tree in central park. Apparently, a few nymphs had told her they would take care of it for her until she found a place a live.

"I'm going to go find Percy," I said while Annabeth cleaned out her locker for the day. "We'll meet you out front, okay?"

"Sure," she agreed. "But tell Percy not to make any stops along the way. I want to go home."

"Excited for tonight?" I teased, poking her in the ribs.

"I will find another way home, Leila," Annabeth called after me as I walked away.

I laughed. "I figured you'd say that!"

Once I had battled my way over through freshman, sophomores, juniors, and yes, even a few seniors, I finally reached Percy's locker. He digging in his locker—dangerous task, let me tell you—facing towards me, and none other than Cara herself was yapping his ear off.

I hung back, waiting for the perfection time to cut in, but before I could save Percy from his possible-Prada-bee death, Cara grabbed Percy's arm.

Immediately, my hand dropped to my dagger and braced myself for an attack—but I let out a breath as Cara just dragged Percy across the hall to her own locker.

She put her books into her locker and then starting fixing her makeup—and she was _still talking_.

Even for a mortal, Cara must be oblivious because I'm pretty sure anyone could see that Percy wasn't listening. He kept shifting from one foot and then the other, glancing around every couple of seconds—looking for an escape, no doubt.

Finally, he caught my eye and behind Cara's back, he gave an expression that screamed for seven different levels of help. I almost laughed, but Annabeth totally would've killed me for not helping him, so instead, I winked at him and walked on over.

"Hey, Perce," I said, putting my elbow on his shoulder ready to stare/glare this Snob into the ground if I had to. "What'cha doing?"

Cara's makeuped face glowed with pride and stuck her chin a little higher into the air. "Nothing," Percy replied as Cara's face fell like she had been expecting Percy to introduce her with a glowing review and lots of gold stars.

"Well, then, let's go! Thalia already took off with Nico and Annabeth said for me to tell you that if you don't hurry up she's going home without you," I told him.

Percy looked at me like he was torn between hugging me and strangling me. I smirked and he huffed. "Okay, okay! I'm coming," he said.

I nodded once, ignoring the mortal's pout, but before we could both completely escape, Cara called, "See you tomorrow then, Percy? My house at like… six-ish?"

I froze, quickly racking my brain for something that would get us out of this mess as soon as possible. There was no way in Hades Percy was going over to Cara's. "Percy," I blurted out, finally thinking of an excuse, "Mom's out tomorrow night with Paul. You have to be home."

Percy gave me a sideways glance that clearly said: _Mom goes out every night with Paul_, but he mainly looked relieved. "Oh, yeah," he said.

"At your house then," Cara said stubbornly. Gods, she wouldn't give up! Percy and her had obviously been assigned project partners, but seriously, did they have to work on this stuff right away? "That's fine," the girl continued as I struggled with the urge to hit her. "So text me your address?"

"Don't have a phone," Percy told her.

Cara stared at my brother as if the world had actually stopped. "You got have a phone?" she repeated in shock.

"Nope," he confirmed while trying to hide a grin. _Not having a cell phone won't stop her, Percy,_ I warned him with a long look.

"Okay…" Cara stated, blinking rapidly like it was impossible for her to understand why a teenage boy would _not_ have a cell phone.

"I'll write it down for you," I told Cara as patiently as I could. "Percy needs to go get Annabeth and explain." Annabeth would kill me, Percy, and the mortal if they were late on their date tonight.

"Bye," Percy muttered, nodding once to Cara, then as he pasted, Percy discreetly gave me a fist-pump in thanks.

I fought back a smirk by using the most bored tone I could manage. It wasn't hard. Cara could probably put chairs to sleep. "Got paper?"

"Uh, yeah," she said, reaching into her locker. After searching around for a moment, she pulled out a glittery pink notebook with a matching pink pen that had one of those big feather pom-poms on the end.

I sighed, but took the notebook from her. I quickly started jotting down our apartment's address, but had to stop every few seconds to reread what I had wrote. I had to make sure I wasn't writing in Greek. _That _would weird.

And yet, she would probably never try to visit again.

"Got it?" I told her once I had finished and given her the paper.

She flashed me a big, ultra whitened smile. "Yep! See you tomorrow!"

I couldn't trust myself not to attack her so I just turned and left without another word.

* * *

><p>After school, Percy and I talked our mom about Thalia staying with us. (None of us were really surprised when she said yes.) Once we got the all clear, Mom volunteered Nico and I to get the extra cot for Thalia to sleep on out of storage while Percy helped Annabeth push her bed over to one side of the room so Thalia could have room on the other. Oh, yeah, while her friends worked super hard to make sure she had a place to live, Thalia ate fresh baked cookies and got comfortable on the couch.<p>

Typical.

I love that girl.

"So," I said later, throwing my stuff onto my side of Percy and I shared bedroom. "Annabeth's taking this well."

Percy looked up from his Greek book. "About Korra—"

"Cara," I corrected, climbing up onto my bed with the plate of cookies I had taken from the kitchen.

"About Cara," he repeated, catching a cookie I tossed his way, "being my lab partner?"

I nodded, munching on my own cookie.

Percy closed his Greek book—_homework done_, I thought, rolling my eyes—and bit into his cookie. "She too' it pre'y 'ell," he said, with his mouth still full.

I laughed. "Duh, she's Annabeth. She can handle the silly mortal."

"Are you sure she's okay with it, though?" he asked once he had finished chewing. "I mean, she's not mad at me, right?"

"Nope," I confirmed, propping myself up on my elbows and grabbing another cookie. "She's not mad at you."

"Good," he said, taking another cookie. "Did Thalia get set up?"

"Yep. Annabeth and I helped her unpack everything and we did girly-demigod stuff like make beds and gossip about ugly mortals," I joked. "Where are you and Annabeth going for your date tonight?"

"We're probably going to go get dinner somewhere. After that, I guess we'll just walk around the city for a while."

I nodded my approval. "Cool. Definitely sounds appropriate for a school night," I said with a smirk.

"Hey, there is never a wrong time to want alone time with your girlfriend," Percy told me, pointing at me with half a cookie. "I have been sharing Annabeth with you and Mom and Nico and now, Thalia—and I'm sick of it! She's_ my_ girlfriend."

"Percy," I laughed. "You sound like you're five."

"Well, you and Annabeth have been attached at the hip lately," he muttered.

"You cannot tell me you preferred us screaming and fighting all the time," I said in disbelief. "We're friends now. Big deal. I thought you'd be happy that we're finally getting along."

"I am," he said quickly, rolling a cookie around in his hand, "but now that you guys are friends, Annabeth and I don't hang out as much—you know, alone."

I fought against my smile with everything I had, but I seemed to be fighting a loosing battle. "Percy Jackson—," I stuttered through my almost uncontrolled laughter, "—are you _jealous_?"

At that moment, only five years of hard demigod training saved my life. A heavy Greek book came flying at me at top speed and I had enough sense to roll over before it hit me.

_"Did you just throw a book at my head?!"_ I screamed at Percy. "What the heck?!"

"You were laughing at me!" He shouted.

"Yes," I snapped, "because you are being ridiculous! Annabeth and I are getting along Percy—SO WHAT?! STOP BEING SUCH A BABY! Gods, learn how to share!"

Percy and I glared at each other until a BANG sounded from the hall on the other side of the door.

"Now you've done it," Percy told me as he jumped off his bed and flung open our door.

"Annabeth, open the door," I heard Percy beg from the hallway. "Come on, Annabeth. _Please_ _talk to me._"

Percy and I always bickered. We were twins—bickering was in the job description—but we rarely ever actually fought. Except, every time we did fight, Annabeth seemed to get caught in the middle. Only this time, Percy and I were literally fighting over Annabeth.

Just as I was considering trying to get Annabeth to open the door myself, I looked up to see our mom leaning against the doorway. "What happened?" she asked, crossing her arms. "Percy looks like you stabbed him again."

"He's the one who threw a book at my head," I said stiffly, climbing off the bed and setting the empty cookie plate on my dresser.

My mom's eyes widen. "He threw a _what—?_"

"It doesn't matter, Mom," I said, untying my sneakers. "He knew I would move."

She raised an elbow. "Leila, why did he throw the book at you?"

I shook my head, tossing my shoes aside. "Look, I didn't do anything this time, I wear. It isn't a big deal. Percy and I had just had a little fight, and Annabeth got upset."

"She won't come out of her room," Percy said sullenly, joining my mom at the doorway.

My mom sighed and wrapped an arm around Percy shoulders. "You two need to stop fighting," she said calmly, looking between the two of us. "Especially around people that love you. Annabeth cares for you both _so much_. She must hate to see you fight."

"We didn't know she could hear us," I muttered.

"That doesn't matter and you know it, Leila," she stated firmly. "You're going to drive each other completely crazy if you don't stop."

When neither of us responded, our mom sighed. "I'm assuming you two are now going to try and convince me you can handle Thalia staying here, too?"

"We can do it," Percy protested.

"Well, I'm not sure it matter because Thalia is definitely staying," our mom said. "I'm not letting her go stay at an apartment by herself—that's ridiculous."

Percy shrugged and glanced back at Annabeth's room, obviously still worried about his girlfriend. "Why won't she open the door?" he whined, roughly running a hand through his hair.

Our mom sighed again and walked up to the door. "Annabeth, sweetie," she said, knocking lightly, "can I come in?" My mom could probably charm her way in and out of Hades with that tone. It was the tone only true mother's possessed; the tone that meant all comfort and only what's best for you.

So it wasn't really a surprise when the door creaked opened and my mom slipped inside, ignoring Percy's desperate expression.

"It'll be fine," I told Percy and he paced back and forth. He scowled, but otherwise ignored me.

My temper flared. "Hey," I snapped, punching his shoulder. "This isn't my fault. I was kidding around." He glared at me, not even stumbling back from the punch I gave him—stupid Achilles curse.

Percy could stay mad at me for hours—maybe even days! This may have been a bit desperate or manipulative, but I used the last card only I could ever play: little sister.

I dropped down onto the edge of the bed in defeat. "I'm sorry," I told Percy honestly. He recognized my tone instantly and stopped pacing. "You were being honest. I really didn't mean to joke or anything. I guess this whole Cara mess has all of us on edge."

I have to admit it wasn't my best apology, but it did its job well enough. Percy sighed and I waited for him to call me ridiculous and keep yelling. But as usual, he didn't.

He came over and sat next to me on the bed. "I love that you and Annabeth are getting along. It is seriously awesome. Now I can hang out with my two best friends and not worry about starting World War III." He poked my side and I squirmed.

"I love Annabeth," I said, swatting his hand away, "but I only love her because you do."

"So if I broke with her, you wouldn't care?"

"Of course I would care!" I protested. "But if you did it for the right reasons than I would let it go." I reached around and tapped his Achilles spot. "I told you—I've got your back."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Percy smiled, leaning against my shoulder. "I'm not the prophecy kid anymore, though. You don't have to babysit all the time. There isn't some prophecy possibly predicting my death and the world's fate won't fall to your shoulders if I get into some fatal accident."

"I'm your twin sister, Percy," I stated. "I've been babysitting you all my life and I'll probably continue until I'm convinced you can take care of yourself.

"Oh, with Annabeth, of course," I added.

He grinned. "We've been a mess lately, huh?"

"We're a bunch of teenagers who have been through a lot and know a little bit too much about each other," I said. "We were bound to crash and burn sometime."

"And we knew Mom would say yes to Thalia staying here with us," Percy continued. "But I guess this isn't really fair to her."

"Then for Mom's sake, I guess we are going to have to stop fighting so much."

Percy sighed like I was causing him a huge inconvenience. "Fine," he said. "Just for Mom."

Percy laughed and I stuck my tongue out at him. "You two finished yet?" Annabeth asked, walking in and perching herself down next to Percy. My brother immediately wrapped his arms around Annabeth.

"I still might kill him," I admitted, bumping her knee with mine.

She sighed. "I know, but fight the urge, okay?"

Percy started but Annabeth quickly shushed him with her hand. "No, this is my turn to talk. You two have done enough screaming for the day." She turned and faced us, giving us a serious Athena-stare down. "I want you guys to know… you're both going to drive me completely insane. And I brought fresh cookies," she finished finally smiling and holding out another plate.

"Sounds like the war is over," Thalia joked as the door swung open and she, followed by Nico, joined our little hang out.

"Since when did our room become the place to hang out?" Percy said, echoing my thoughts.

"Dude, you have cookies," Nico said, pointing. "We gather with the food."

Thalia shrugged and kicked off her shoes. "Might as well get comfortable," she said, jumping up onto my bed.

"Get off!" I screeched as she jumped dangerously close to my head. "Thalia Grace, if you kill me, I'll haunt you until the die you die!"

"She's totally serious," Annabeth said over Percy's laughter and Nico cookie munching.

"Get your immortal butt off my bed!" I shrieked, kicking my legs up try and stop her. She tried to avoid me—but accidently jumped too far and fall onto the floor.

I meant to ask if she was okay, but I was laughing too hard to check. I guess since Thalia was laughing, too, then she survived without too many injuries.

* * *

><p>Percy and Annabeth left for their date at 4'o clock sharp. By 4:02, Thalia, Nico, and I were crashed on the couch starting our awesome night-long, scary movie marathon.<p>

"Hey, Leila, hand me that blanket," Nico said.

"You have two legs," I told him. "Get it yourself!"

"Come on, just pass it to me!" he begged, whining loudly over the opening credits. "It's right behind your head!"

"Ugh, fine!" I said, moving out of my comfortable position to get the blanket. I reached up and threw it to Nico as hard as I could. It lopped him in the side of the head and landed as lump in his lap.

Nico blinked. "Got to love quality time with cousins," he muttered.

"I could get used to this," Thalia admitted, snuggling deeper into the sofa cushions.

"It's not a bad life," I agreed, adjusting back into my comfy spot. "But being a Hunter sounds amazing."

"Don't tell Will that!" Nico laughed. "He'd have a heart attack."

I scowled at him. The phone rang and we all groaned. "Leila!" my mom called from the kitchen. "Could you get that for me?"

I groaned and let my head drop against the back of the couch. "Yes!" I hollered back. "I'm coming!"

Quickly, I jumped up and ran into the kitchen. My mom was making dinner and smiled at me, motioning toward the phone with her chin. "Go on," she said, still smiling.

I shrugged and grabbed the phone. "Thank you for calling Underwater Castle Incorporated for all your conventional and unconventional sandcastle needs—this is Lily. How can I help you?" I rattled off.

"_Leila,_" my mom hissed, trying not to laugh. "What have told you about answering the phone like that?"

_Too late,_ I mouthed and now, my mom did laugh. She turned away and continued making dinner.

A laugh echoed on the other side of the phone and my heart may have done one of those ridiculous little flips. "Do you answer like this all the time—or is it just special for me?" Will teased.

"I always do," I told him, trying to keep a smile out my voice. "You're not special enough for such an awesome greeting."

"Well, you're grinning like crazy right now so I'd say I'm pretty special," he responded.

"Tell Will I said hi," my mom said, not turning around.

I felt my face heating up—gosh, even my mom knew how crazy I got around Will—but I passed on her message to Will. "He says hi back," I told my mom.

"Oh," I said, talking to Will again. "You are never going to believe what this girl at school—"

"Hold on," Will said. "Could you do my favor first?"

"Sure," I replied, leaning against the counter. Will wasn't just my sort-of boyfriend, he was also one of my best friend so nothing was weird anymore. He could probably ask me to help him kidnap a panda and I'd be cool with it.

"Can you meet me downstairs?"

I almost dropped the phone, but I thankfully, I actually kept my excitement under control this time. "Give me two minutes," I told him and hung up. I didn't bother saying goodbye. If he was waiting downstairs, I wasn't going to waste time now.

"Will's downstairs," I said, kissing my mom's cheek. "I'll be back for dinner."

"Make sure you tell Will he's invited to stay!" she called to me as I quickly got ready to go.

Sneakers? Check.

Extra weapons? Check.

Cute outfit? Eh, sort of check.

_Should I brush it? _I wondered, glancing at my always slightly messy hair—then I scoffed. Oh, please. This was Will. He's seen worse. _I'll make an effort next time,_ I promised myself. _Will can survive until then._

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: All right, so there wasn't tons of mortal-takedown action, but don't worry! More is coming. Make sure you check out _Watching Among Them_ for Annabeth's POV because—YES! There are several scenes that are not in _From the Outside_ and _Insiders Know All_.)**

**Answering last chapters question: **I am totally obsessed with Greek mythology. I found it awesome until I read Percy Jackson and after that, I just became completely obsessed. Yep! I'm crazy.

**Now, this chapter's sort of question:  
><strong>_Family fights. Admit it, we all have them, right?_

My Facebook page for update alerts/early teasers and such is _Completely Shore_.


	6. Phase 5

**Disclaimer: It's strange... Even after all this time, I STILL do NOT own Percy Jackson... weird, right?!**

* * *

><p>Phase Five<p>

When Will asked where we should go, I smiled. "There's a little cafe a few blocks from here that awesome sandwiches," I told him.

He grinned. "Perfect."

Four blocks and two sandwiches later, Will and I were sitting at a table near the windows of the cafe catching up with the finer details we might have missed the first time.

Retelling stories was always fun with Will because no matter how many stories I had to tell about school and quests, he always had something to share, too. Like how will had to argue with Chiron for three days about leaving camp and coming to visit me in the city. Eventually, Will gave up and went straight to Mr. D about it. Dionysus gave him permission, claiming it would save time and further headaches. And—thank the gods—I was relieved to find out that Mrs. O'Leary was still alive and well and not is a dog pound yet.

"So these girls actually _like _Percy?" Will asked I had finished updating him about Cara and her band of snobs.

"I know," I agreed, twirling my soda straw. "It's crazy."

Will shook his head. We were sitting at a table by the windows (ready to make a sudden getaway, if needed), finishing our drinks. "Obviously they haven't had a full conversation with him," he replied.

He already knew how stupid the Snobs were—did they need another reason to like Percy? "Cara sort of did," I said. "I mean, the conversation only lasted a few minutes but that still counts, right?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. I'm not sure. I wasn't there."

"Too bad you weren't," I said,

He sighed dramatically. "How do you stand it all without me? First Percy and Annabeth, then Nico, and now Thalia, too!"

"I did try to kill Percy today," I admitted. He laughed.

"I'm serious! Well, almost serious. Percy's the one who threw things, I just yelled at him. Anyway," I said, looking in the mirror on the wall behind Will. "That's not important, the point is—" My eyes widen. "Oh, my gods."

Will recognized my expression instantly and set down his cup. "Monster?" He asked under his breath.

"No! Worse," I hissed, quickly moving my hair so it fell around me, covering my face. "_She's here_."

"The mortal?"

"Yes! The mortal and her friends—they are at the table literally right behind us." I cursed. "How did it take me this long to notice them?"

"Here," Will quickly stripped off his hoodie and handed it across the table. "They don't know who I am and this will hide you better than your hair."

I stuck my tongue out at him for that last comment—but thanked him and took it anyway. "There's mirror on the wall behind you," I said, pulling the sweatshirt on and pulling the hood up. "I don't want to risk looking at it if any of them are looking this way."

Will's eyes drifted behind me for a second. "No, they're all huddled together. It looks like they're reading."

_They can read?_ I wondered. "Okay, this is weird," I muttered.

"Yeah," Will agreed. "They sound a little nuts, and don't exactly seem like the type of girls to get coffee and read in their spare time..."

I narrowed my eyes. "Can you see what it says?" I asked.

He shook his head, picking up his cup again. "Sorry. It's too far away. But from here it kind of looks like... A file or something."

My internal suspicion radar spiked. Carefully, I leaned back in my chair, hoping I might be able to catch some of their conversation.

"…expelled two months early for hitting a school bus with a Revolutionary War cannon ball," Cara said in her high, obnoxious voice as she read aloud to her friends. "Percy's class took a trip to the Saratoga Battlefield where him and his sister were seen playing around with a cannon causing it to fire and hit the school bus."

"It's our files," I whispered in horror as the three girls behind me practically howled with laughter. "Will, they have a copy of my and Percy's permanent records."

Will almost dropped his cup. "_WHAT?_" Will exclaimed. "Are you sure?"

"Yes! Chiron had to break into the permanent record database to change a few things like Percy blowing up Goode high school or killing our pre-algebra teacher. Normal kid stuff, you know? Percy and I got a chance to look over some comment from pervious schools," I explained to Will. "Man, I will never forget how hopeless some teachers sounded."

"Alright, do you want your file back?" Will asked.

For a moment, I imagined getting up and confronting the Snobs face to face. I could demand my file and slap them while Will planned out our quick getaway. I sighed as reality mixed into my fantasy. _Jail, here I come,_ I thought, thinking out the rest of my not-so-planned-out plan. "Probably not a good idea," I decided.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. "They can't keep your file Leila"

"I know, but honestly, there isn't really anything important in it. At least, not you know, normal-natural," I said, using the term Will and I made up for the _super_-but-actually-very-normal-_natural_ demigod world we live in.

"_That_ doesn't matter. I mean, that's good, but they have your file. Whether it has anything normal-natural in it or not—they shouldn't have it!"

"Let's hope Annabeth will have an idea to get it back then," I said, standing up.

"You're leaving?" Will looked so miserable, I almost changed my mind, but if I stayed any longer, I knew this encounter would probably end with monsters.

"We can't stay," I told him firmly. "With monsters and mortals on the loose, we'll be shark bait in less the ten minutes."

"Interesting choice of words," Will muttered, tossing some cash on the table. "And sadly, you're right. We should get going."

I pulled the hood over the side of my face as we passed the Snob's table. Will came around and put his arm across my shoulders, blocking me from mortal view and making me have another girly-heart-flip moment—total win, if you ask me. I'm not really a big supporter of public displays of affection. Actually, I kind of hated all PDA in general but I still like having Will act like my boyfriend in public. Over the years, we seemed to have formed a nice middle ground between over-the-top PDA and stone cold friend-zone. Arm around the waist was okay, but since Percy seemed to have a big problem with this, an arm over the shoulder was ideal. (Will claimed holding hands never worked because I was always to busy throwing things everywhere. I don't agree, but I don't really disagree either.)

"Ok," I said once we were safely outside, "you know my mom offered but if you come, are you actually going to stay this time?"

As we starting walking, he adjusted his arm into a more comfortable position around my shoulder. "Actually," he said, "I promised Mr. D I'd be back by midnight."

"Poor Cinderella. Cut off again," I teased. "You'll have to come up and say hi, though."

"I'll come back and hang for a while," he agreed, nodding profusely. "It's been a while since I've seen everyone and Travis and Conner already promised to cover for me if I'm late."

I stopped walking and looked up at him. "Then you can stay late," I told him. Will was a few years older than me, but having someone more mature and still completely understanding to fall back on was exactly what I needed. The fact that he just happened to be thoroughly gorgeous and also taller than me was just a perk.

Honestly, I'm still not sure how he hasn't gotten tired of me after all these years. He claimed it was mutual love between the both of us right from the beginning; not exactly love at first sight, though. "Love at first sarcasm," Will always jokes. He's an idiot, but he just happens to be my idiot—even if I do want to strangle him sometimes. But gods, I love him.

"Doesn't matter," Will stated. "I'm staying until you kick me out."

"Not going to happen," I warned him. He pulled me closer into his side and gave me a quick kiss on my temple, short and cute enough to displayed in public. I shot him a quick grin. _He knows me well._

Lately, my mom and my stepdad, Paul had been spending most nights packing up Paul's old apartment and moving everything over here. Between the two of them, my mom ended having the bigger apartment with more floor-space for demigods. I hadn't seen much of either of them very much since a bunch of teenagers took over our home apartment, but they hadn't been married very long and we were all quite annoying so I didn't really mind.

After all, I totally understand why a house full of teenagers wasn't exactly an amazing place for serious talks. Yes, I am speaking from experience.

Mom always makes sure we have food and Paul does an awesome job of making sure we avoid killing anyone at school—normal family stuff—but other than that, we demigods pretty much run the apartment by ourselves.

Anyways, considering this, it wasn't a surprise that the only people to greet Will and I when we got back were understand the age of eighteen—even though Nico should technically be like really old since he was born during the World War II era.

The first thing I noticed was that Annabeth wasn't dressed up anymore—but in my girlish opinion, she looked even more fabulous in her sweatpants and worn-out Camp Half-Blood t-shirt. She glowed in a thoroughly kissed sort of way and gave me a knowing smirk when Will and I came into the living room. I scowled at her while Percy scowled at me. I had a feeling I would hear hell later for leaving—silly, overprotective brother—and leaned against the wall as Will said his hellos.

Unlike Annabeth and I, Percy and Will never really had problems. Yeah, when Percy found out that Will and I were officially—and in my boyfriend's opinion, _finally_—dating he had a "talk" with Will, but we'd been friends for years so Percy was used to seeing Will hanging around. They weren't best friends, but they weren't ready to kill each other, either, so it was cool.

Percy untangled himself from his girlfriend and got up from the sofa to greet Will. The two guys quickly did the complicated "bro" handshake that every boy in the universe seems to know and briefly caught up with each other.

"How's it been, man?" Percy asked, grinning at Will. "Everyone at camp surviving alright?"

"Things are good," Will said with a nod. "How's school going?"

My brother shrugged. "Pretty good."

"Cool."

…And they were done. That's it.

What would have take some girls hours, the boys just accomplish in ten seconds using no more than twenty words. I'll admit, Thalia and I did kind of do a sort of boyish-hello (Annabeth really likes to think things through), but hey, I did say _some_ girls.

We all got comfortable on the couch. An action movie was playing and characters were running across the screen doing wild ninja like flips. I snorted. The characters looked ridiculous. _Hollywood, _I thought to myself. _What a joke._ "Sorry to ruin the night," I said, breaking the silence—I could take so much of this crazy movie. "But we've got a bit of a problem.

"The mortals were at that little sandwich place tonight," I continued, mostly talking to Annabeth and Percy since I knew this would interest both of them the most.

"The same one you went to?" Annabeth asked while Percy said: "What sandwich did you have?"

I gave them both a long look. "What do you think?" I stated.

Annabeth ran a hang through her hair in frustration and collapsed down into the sofa. Percy just nodded. "You had peanut butter."

"Forget the sandwich, Percy!" Thalia told him, throwing the TV remote at him. "We've got bigger problems!"

"That's not all," I said as Percy ducked away from the flying remote. "They had our school files."

"They… had your files…?" Annabeth asked in her strangely I'm-still-calm-on-the-brink-of-murdering someone voice.

Nico sat up. "Sorry—I'm not a daughter of Athena. You're going to have to explain more to the rest of us. What do you mean?"

"Look," I continued, "they were huddled around reading a file about my and Percy's fourth grade experience with the canon. There's only one place that kind of information would be."

"Your permanent record," Annabeth said, nodding. "Of course! The brunette—Amy! I'm almost completely sure she works in the office. She could have access to that kind of information."

"Why didn't you get it back?" Thalia asked me.

"I thought about it," I replied, "but you'd probably be picking me up from jail for assault charges."

"I'm not saying you had to start a fight, Leila," she said. "You could've just calmly walked and taken the file back. It's yours, not theirs. They could get into major trouble for this; maybe even kicked out of the school."

Will snorted. "Since when does Leila do anything calmly?" I elbowed him in the ribs as Percy laughed and nodded in agreement at Will.

"Besides that," Annabeth said, "I checked the high school's archives earlier. All three of their families donate huge amounts of money to the school. Getting them kicked out of school would be nearly impossible."

"Whoa—hold on," Nico cut in, motioning in a time-out gesture. "What experience with the canon?"

"Leila and I sort of set off a Revolutionary War canon during a field trip in the fourth grade," Percy explained.

"Perce, what do you mean 'Leila and I'?" I said to my brother while Nico practically had seizures of laughter. "That was completely your fault!"

"You were the one standing there going: 'come on, Percy! Just try it! It's not like it's loaded or something!'" Percy said in a bad imitation of my voice.

I shook my head. "That is _not_ how it happened!"

"HEY!" Annabeth shouted. "Stop it! Honestly, who cares? It happened years ago. We need to focus on the problem we're currently dealing with right now."

"She's right," Thalia said, sending a couple glares toward Percy and I. "The canon doesn't matter."

"But the file does," Annabeth finished. "Now, do either of you know what was in the file?"

Percy shrugged. "There wasn't really anything demigod related if that's what you mean."

"Yeah," I agreed. "They're mostly just records of how we got expelled every year from every school we tried to go to."

"Maybe that will be enough to scare her away," Will said.

"I doubt that," Annabeth said dryly.

"You have no idea how determined she is to have Percy," Nico told Will. "She's basically stalking him."

"Holy Hephaestus, Nico!" Thalia yelled. "_Shut up!_ You're not making things any better!"

"Well, what are we supposed to do?" he said. "Short of killing her—we can't do anything!"

"You know," Will muttered, "I'm really hoping you would transfer schools before you tried offing her like that, Nico."

He blinked. "And leave her to hunt down someone else? No way! Actually, she'd probably follow us to another school if it meant more Percy-stalking."

I rolled my eyes. "What are we going to do, Annabeth?"

"As long as there isn't anything super important in it, I'm not sure there is anything we can do," she admitted reluctantly. "Not including the demigod-related parts, let's assume for now that Cara Kray knows everything."

* * *

><p>"Sorry I kind of ruined your date last night," I said to Annabeth, as we got ready for school the next day. Annabeth, Thalia, and I had kicked Percy out of his room for a while we talked for a few minutes.<p>

At first, Percy had argued, throwing nervous glances towards us when we suggested he leave for a bit. Of course, Thalia kept telling him there was some very vital no-boys-allowed girl's talk that needed to happen. This just made him more nervous—but he left did not want to hear about my relationship with Will anymore than I wanted to hear about his with Annabeth. He was convinced that if he learned more than what was necessary, he would have to leave Will in a ditch full of hungry piranhas. Since I loved my boyfriend, I gladly kept silent. Percy actually liked Will. I was happy to leave well enough alone.

Annabeth sighed. "Don't worry about it. I don't want you to regret telling me, you know? I'm glad you told me. This is important. I would've wanted to know."

"I know. That's why I told you," I winked and grabbed my gloriously normal backpack—I'm never using a purse again. "How did the date go before Will and I got back, though?"

She smiled, her eyes dancing with happy memories. "I'm not sure you could handle it," Annabeth teased.

"I don't even think I could handle _that_," Thalia told her as I nodded in agreement.

When we joined the rest of the gang in the kitchen, I turned to Percy. "Is she coming home with us after school?" I asked, knowing that he knew exactly what I meant.

He shook his head as we filed out of the apartment. "No. She said she wasn't going to school today, so we were meeting at six."

"Not going to school?" Annabeth repeated in horror. "The third day of school and she's not going? Why on Earth not?"

Percy's hand froze halfway to the door. I knocked his hand out of the way and locked the door while Percy stared at Annabeth with a blank expression on his face—he had forgotten.

I held up Percy's keys. "Weren't you guys talking about Homecoming when I got there?" I said, trying to remember the conversation I had interrupted yesterday.

"Right! She was going shopping for a Homecoming dress," Percy remembered, taking his keys with a grin.

Now, shopping did not appeal to me _at all_, but it seemed to render Annabeth absolutely speechless. She almost she seem to be malfunctioning. "School – skipping – dress – buy – Homecoming – but – I – how—?" she managed to get out in between huffs of disbelief. Eventually, she looked at me, obviously trying to relate with the idea of skipping school.

I held up my hands in surrender. "Look, I hate school," I told her, "but even I wouldn't do that."

"She's a moron! How in Hades' name can Homecoming and Percy be more important to her than her education?" Annabeth screeched, stomping her foot in anger.

Thalia and I laughed while Percy frowned. "Hey!" he said.

"Sorry," she said to Percy, regaining in her anger. "You know what I mean. She doesn't care about you as a person, she just wants you because she thinks you'd look good together."

Percy frowned. He obviously wasn't finished. "I'm more important than education," he said.

Thalia nudged me and winked. I smirked at her while Annabeth attempted to explain herself. "Well, you are to me," she said slowly, "but that's because I actually know you."

Percy stopped walking and turned so he was fully facing his girlfriend. "You care about me more than education?"

That's about when Thalia and I lost it. We were laughing so hard people actually crossed the street to avoid walking next to us. "Yeah," I managed while Thalia continued laughing, "A daughter of Athena cares more about Percy than about education?"

Nico joined Thalia and I in our crazy laughter as Annabeth gave each of us a good, hard glare. "Oh, shut up," she told us, pulling a very smug looking Percy away from us. "And don't let it swell your head any more than it already is."

Thalia choked down the last of her laughter. "But, we'll have time after school before she gets here, right?" she asked, going back to the original topic.

"Yeah," Annabeth nodded—then narrowed her eyes. "Why? Did you guys not demigod-proof your rooms last night like I told you to?"

Nico shrugged. "We're too lazy to do things when you tell us to," he said simply.

"Yeah," I said, knocking shoulders with Nico. "We like to put things off until the last minute." I know Annabeth wasn't surprised. After all, that daughter of Athena had our patterns memorized better than anyone—probably even ourselves—but saying it aloud made the rest of us feel better, I guess. It made it less creepy when we realized Annabeth knew us really, really well.

Annabeth gave Thalia and I one last look that said: _I would've appreciated some help_. I smiled at her in a way that promised I'd do better next time—even though I wouldn't—and Thalia just shrugged like, _what'd you expect?_

"Fine," Annabeth stated, "but that means we won't have too much time to shop for Homecoming stuff."

I almost bailed on school and ran for the California Mountains. Monsters, Titans, and Snobs—I could take down any of those, any day with batting an eye. That was normal for me. Homecoming, on the other hand… that made me blink. Repeatedly. "Oh," I said, keeping my voice as normal as possible, "that's tomorrow?"

Of course, Percy totally saw straight through me, and he frowned. "Yeah," Annabeth continued. "You're going, right?"

"Well, I don't know…" I admitted. Since Will couldn't come, I didn't really see the point. I wouldn't dance with anyone else—except maybe Thalia for fun since she had that whole _no boys EVER_ thing going on—and I'd probably be bored-stiff the whole time.

Besides, before Will left last night, the two of us had started a plan about me visiting camp Half-Blood for the day.

Annabeth realized how close I was to skipping the dance. "Oh, come on! You know the devil will be there," she told me, using the only reason I would willing go to persuade me, "and I don't think I can handle her without some moral support."

"Hey!" Thalia objected. "What am I, chopped hellhound?" Percy and I immediately shared a look of horror, imagining Mrs. O'Leary. Thalia just scowled and more mortals scurried out of our way.

"Thalia, that's disgusting," Annabeth said, echoing our thoughts. "I don't think mortal sayings really work out with Greek mythological monsters. Also, chopped hellhound isn't possible – it'd be dust by the time you could chop it."

Annabeth's random facts used to bother me worse than fighting giant lobsters during a hailstorm while trying to tie my shoes, but I guess it faded with everything else. _Daughter of Athena,_ I thought with a grin. Thalia rolled her eyes. "Shut up and let me have my fun, or I won't go to Homecoming either," she threatened.

"Fine, fine!" Annabeth relented. She obviously really didn't want to go to Homecoming without backup—and there's no way in Hades she would. I wasn't happy about it, but as usual, that didn't really matter. A demigod's work is never done.

As of now, I was officially going to Homecoming.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: Alright, I'm still getting the hang of this stuff again so make sure you guys leave me reviews telling me whether or not you liked this, 'kay? Haha! Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I missed you guys so much!)**

**IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ALL!  
><em>Holly Chase<em> asked about hearing from maybe Percy's or Nico's point of view. Honestly, I would love to do Percy or Nico, but I have this huge fear that I'll write them wrong. Although, if ANYONE is interested in writing from their POV... let me know! I love working with other authors! _AnnabethLuna_ has been an extremely amazing help to me by writing Annabeth's POV for Watching Among Them. It's been awesome working with her! [She even wrote some of the ****dialogue for this chapter, by the way.) Anyways, if anyone thinks they might be up for the challenge, send a note in a review or private message!**

**Thanks for sticking with me!**

* * *

><p><strong>Answering last chapters question: <strong>Ah, family fights... "Civil wars" as **_Holly Chase_** calls them. Anyways, my sister and I fight like Zeus and Poseidon sometimes, but what'cha going to do?! I love her! ;)

**Now, this chapter's sort of question:  
><strong>_Who here likes school dances?_

If you so fancy, visit my Facebook page, _Completely Shore_.


	7. Phase 6

**Disclaimer: I DID IT! Wait… No. Sorry. False alarm. I still don't own Percy Jackson… ;)**

* * *

><p>Phase Six<p>

Operation A.S.A.A.C. (Avoid Snobs At All Cost—Nico's name, not mine) was going perfectly. Percy and I spent the whole day sneaking around the school like ninjas. No monster or mortal could surprise us today. We crept around corners just waiting for one of the Snobs to jump out and ambush at us at any second. We wanted to be prepared.

…Then as we were walking home, Annabeth reminded us they weren't even in school today. Of course, when I asked her why she reminded the two of us _AFTER _SCHOOL WAS OVER, she just shrugged and said she liked walking us "attempt to be sneaky." Thalia and Nico laughed, and Annabeth attempted to keep a straight face while Percy and I gaped at them like fish—she quickly gave up and joined in with the laughter, but I had to admire her effort.

"Mission complete for the day," Percy told me seriously.

I nodded once and matched his tone perfectly. "The threat has been temporarily eliminated."

Percy serious expression disappeared and he grinned. "Want to do it again tomorrow?"

"Duh!" I said. I held out my hand for a high-five and Percy gladly returned.

As we came up to the last corner before our apartment, Thalia tried to control herself. She wiped the tears out of her eyes and let out a long breath. "You guys are so weird," she said, her laughter subsiding.

"You're the one that chooses to hang out with us," Percy reminded her, putting an arm around Annabeth's shoulder. Nico and I walked ahead a few steps as the light turned red, giving us a chance to walk across the street.

"See, that's debatable," Thalia continued, crossing over curb. "I mean, technically I'm only here to keep you guys out of troub—WATCH IT!"

Thalia suddenly dove forward and knocked Nico and I out the way. The three of us had landed on the pavement in the middle of the street with one solid _SMACK_ just in a time. An ugly, beat-up yellow cab ran the red light and plowed right over the spot where Nico and I had just been walking.

The three of us were a big mess of limbs. I couldn't tell what was Nico's, what was Thalia's, and what was mine. I tried flipping my hair out of my face only to discover that it wasn't my hair—it was Thalia's.

I blew some of the hair off my nose. "Get your hair out of my face!" I told her trying to find my arms.

"Get your legs off of me!" Nico yelled back at me.

"I wasn't even talking to you!" I snapped. Before any of us could complain more, Percy dragged me out the puzzle and helped me up. Thalia's bag had been dumped out and weapons were scattered everywhere. Annabeth was already stuffing them into her own bag while Thalia and Nico untangled themselves.

"Are you okay?" Percy asked me, officially going into I'm-your-older-brother-by-two-minutes-so-it's-my-j ob-to-take-care-of-you mode. Percy circled me three times brushing off any real and invisible dirt he found.

A car honked and inched forward. The light had turned green.

"We have to go," Annabeth told us, shooing us toward the sidewalk. "Thalia, stop worrying. I've got all your weapons. Nico, put your sword away. Inspect it for damage later. Percy, stop freaking out. Your sister is fine. Leila, turn around and start walking."

These were the times I had always loved Annabeth—even if I wouldn't ever tell her that. She was good at making plan to figure out what needed to be done. When Percy (or the rest of us) weren't thinking straight, she was already one step ahead.

Thankfully, the five of us reached the apartment without any more near-death experiences. We all tossed our things into the living room and headed into the kitchen.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Percy asked me as I rolled my wrists and ankles checking for injuries. "Did you hit your head?"

"Oh, thanks for concern, but I'm fine," Thalia said, waving her hand through the air. "I'm the one that just saved your sister's life and everything, but you know, no need to worry. I'm fine."

Annabeth rolled her eyes but didn't comment as she pulled some water bottles out of the fridge. We all grabbed a water from her and headed for the sofa.

"Percy, I'm fine," I said, shrugging. "No big deal."

"Well, I'm not okay!" Nico shouted, holding up his sword. "Look at this!" He pointed to a section of his blade. "Look at this scratch! It will take me forever to polish this out!"

Percy leaned forward and squinted, looking close to the spot Nico was pointing to. "I don't see anything," he said.

Nico huffed and sulked, cradling his sword carefully and rubbing the spot with the edge of her shirt.

We all crashed on the couch and I propped my leg up on the coffee table. Actually, my leg stung a little, but not in a broken bone sort of way—more in a way scraped skin way. I rolled up my cargo pants and sure enough, the side of my shin looked like road-kill.

And then the water bottles exploded. "HEY!" Thalia shouted, spiting water from her mouth. Annabeth groaned and wiped water off her face and clothes while Nico just stared at us, completely drenched.

"What in Hades was that for?!" Thalia glared at Percy and I obviously not sure which of us was to blame.

I held up my hands. "This isn't my fault," I said as Percy scowled.

"You're the one that pushed her!" Percy snapped back at Thalia, pointing to my shin.

Annabeth sighed and gave up trying to dry her shirt. "I'll get towels." She got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

Thalia threw her empty water bottle at Percy's head. "You idiot! I saved her life and she got a little scratch! Don't freak out! It will heal the next time she showers anyway! Now, I'm soaked! Not all of us are water proof you know!"

"Both of you stop it!" Annabeth said as Percy narrowed his eyes at Thalia. "The Devil will be here in a few hours and look what I just found with the towels." She held up a couple of pink-feather ended darts.

"Oh, that's mine!" I said, jumping up and taking them from Annabeth.

Thalia raised an eyebrow while she started taking clips out of her. "Where did you even get those?"

"And where can I get one?" Nico said eagerly, not even attempting to dry off.

"Travis and Conner," I explained with a shrug as Nico took one of the darts with a creepy smile.

Annabeth crossed her arms. "More importantly, why do keep it with the towels? And how are we going to get this place ready for the mortal if you've got weapons lying all over the apartment?"

"It's not that bad," I said. "I mean, I can remember where most of them are—and it's not like she'll be going through our towels, Annabeth!"

"With this loose canon around," Thalia said, poking Percy in the ribs, "you never know what might happen."

"Shut up." Percy huffed and stared mopping up some water from off the couch.

Once the water was mostly cleaned up, we all started unearthing weapons and giving them "proper" hiding spots under Annabeth's lovely instruction.

While Percy checked for oddly sort-of hidden weapons around the apartment, I decided to help Nico stuff demigod evidence into his closet. Annabeth had already taken care of her own things, so it was her job to help Thalia find good hiding spots for her billions of weapons. When Nico's things were put away and Percy was done searching, my brother and I were ready to tackle the biggest problem: our bedroom.

I have to admit, our bedroom was pretty normal. We had pictures of our friends hanging up, clothes hanging out of drawers, and shoes scattered all over the floor. And then there was the weird stuff.

For example, most of our friends were holding swords or spears in the pictures decorating our walls and most of the shirts on the floor had Greek saying or Camp Half-Blood logos on them—oh, and my knife was still stuck in the wall at the end of my bed from my usual target practice.

"We aren't the cleanest demigods," I said to Percy as we stared at the mess.

"Yeah, I know," he responded, shoving his hands in his pockets. "So how do you plan to cover up the holes in the wall?"

I sucked in air through my teeth and let it out in a huff. "Well," I started slowly. "I can leave my knife where it is and risk being unarmed at the mall, or there can holes in our wall and I'll be prepared for a monster attack."

"Knives would probably freak the mortal out," he reasoned.

I nodded. "Definitely. She would run away screaming in terror and telling everyone how nuts we were."

"Annabeth would kill us, though." He sighed and picked up a few t-shirts.

"Leave the non-demigod stuff on the floor," I told him, walking past our shoes and socks to examine what photos we had to take down. "Teenagers never have clean rooms. It'll look funny if our room is spotless." He nodded and I continued. "Anyways, Annabeth's just afraid Cara—"

"I thought her name was Korra," Percy interrupted, wading up the t-shirts and tossing them into our closet.

"Nope, it's Cara," I mumbled, glancing at the photos. _Should I take down the picture of Percy and Blackjack?_ _His wings aren't really visible… I could probably leave it up. Hopefully she won't be in our rooms at all. _I took down the photo anyway, and turned to face Percy who was trying to pull my knife from the wall. "Please tell you don't call her the wrong name in person," I said, watching him tug hopelessly.

"I usually don't use her name at all because I really can't remember it," he admitted, bracing his feet against the wall and pulling harder. "Will you stopping laughing and help me get these knives out?"

"I wasn't laughing," I told him with a smirk.

He snorted. "Maybe not out loud."

"Here," I said, handing him the pile of photos. "Go put these under the bed with the scrapbooks. I'll cover up the holes."

I went over and pulled lightly on the knife. My blade slipped out easily and then I taped up one of the harmless photos of Travis, Conner, and I that covered most of the wall damage. "Done," I stated.

"Why couldn't I pull it out that easy?"

"The same reason you can't use a bow and arrow. You treat every weapon like your sword. This," I told him, pointing at him with my knife. "is _not _Riptide."

Percy gave me an exasperated look and kicked the last book under the bed. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah, I—darn it!" I huffed, glancing down at my cargo pants and t-shirt. "I promised myself I'd actually try to look nice the next time I saw Will."

Percy shrugged. "So change your clothes. We've got about ten minutes before we have to leave."

I cursed, but started pulling clothes out of my drawers. "I'm going to shower, too. I smell like mortal high school mixed with asphalt."

Percy shrugged. "Annabeth has that stuff that makes girl's smell good," he offered.

"It's called body mist, Percy, and thanks—but I really want a shower. Water will help me calm down anyway," I said before running into our bathroom and slamming the door.

* * *

><p>Honestly, I tried. I really truly tried to be absolutely patiently as I waited for Will.<p>

I people watched. I bought a Cherry Coke. I played hacky-sack (I've gotten pretty good over the years) with the empty can. I even made the water in the fountain speed up, slow down, and then completely stop.

But as usual, the universe was against me and I was outnumbered. I didn't handle boredom very well and almost dying with a splash of nerves and a constant tingling _run-for-your-life_ feeling up and down my back… Well, I was a bit of a mess.

The tingling was something I had gotten used to feeling in overly populated areas. My instincts and mind had been designed to point out danger, but when there were so many people around, I couldn't actually pinpoint where any possible danger might be coming from. Most demigods assume that monsters are out in the open and waving red flags but in reality monsters are usually better at hiding than demigods. That's probably why most of us die before we exit adolescent.

Suddenly, I was grabbed from behind. Now, this might be a bit of what Annabeth would call an "overreaction" but everyone knew you should NEVER sneak up on me. My instincts are so fried after the Titan war that I'll attack anything that may or may not be a threat and ask questions later. I never really have much of a choice. Anyways, let's just say it wasn't really a huge surprise that I immediately stomped back onto the person's foot as hard as I could while also shoving my elbow into their ribcage—but my captor saw it coming.

I was lifted off the ground before my sneaker had even made contact with the other person's foot. "If I put you down, are you going to try and break my foot again?" In response, I jabbed my elbow into his side again. Will just laughed.

"Just put me down," I told him, trying not to laugh.

I relaxed slightly as Will carefully set me on my feet. "What was that for?" I demanded, straightening my shirt.

He sighed and looked up at the sky in a _what am I going to do with this girl? _kind of way. "Why can't you just be happy to see me?" he said.

I didn't have a chance to answer. Will gently grabbed my hand and leaned like his was going to kiss my cheek, but I knew better. I tilted my head slightly and Will whispered, "Percy not the only ones with stalkers anymore. We've got an audience."

He didn't need to tell me more. I tensed and he wrapped his arms around shoulders to keep me from breaking anything. "Don't kill them," he told me.

Slowly, we turned around and faced my worst nightmare come true. "Leila _Jackson_? It is!" Cara said in her overly loud voice, practically dancing and clapping with her fake-happiness. "It is you!"

"Obviously," Will muttered, discreetly rolling his eyes.

Cara leaned so close I caught the smell of her designer perfume. She quickly planted one of those fake sort-of-kisses on both of my cheeks like an annoying, giggling French girl. (I wasn't sure about the French part, but I knew the rest was pretty accurate.)

Even when I was expecting them I had trouble controlling my temper. I tried to form a complete sentence, but my hand itched toward my dagger. I wouldn't kill them—celestial bronze, duh—but I could cut my own eyes out.

I pulled myself together and tried to form a complete sentence. "Cara, Amy, Sophie," I said. "What are you doing here?" The sentence probably came out a little too clipped and hostile because Will's grip tightened.

Cara started laughing like a dying man in need of water. She almost fell over in her fit of giggles, but braced a hand on my arm to stay upright. "We were getting dresses for homecoming, of course!" she said, patting her hand. "What are you doing here?"

That's when her hand moved. I don't know if she thought I wouldn't notice or if she assumed I wouldn't care—but right when she finished asking her question, her arm moved from my arm… to my shoulder… then to Will's. She lightly traced over his wrist and forearm before cocking a hip and leaning back slightly to admire the view.

And then I knew exactly why Annabeth called her "the devil." She was going to die a painful death—and soon.

My eyes narrowed and flicked to the fountain behind them, debating the best way to make this look like an accident.

As different deadly scenarios did little marathons in my head, I attempted to answer her question normally. "I just…" _…need to shove you in a hurricane and walk away. _Eh. That might be a bit too messy. I tried again. "I was just…" _…thinking about attracting a monster's attention and giving you a butter knife and saying: GO FOR IT!_ Possible, but the fountain was still my best option. It was close. I could feel the water's power behind me just waiting to be used.

Will loosened his arms slightly, breaking my concentration. "Just don't kill them," he murmured to me.

It would only take one push. They would probably survive looking like half-drowned cats that had learned their lessons to stay away from other girl's boyfriends. _Just one little shove_…

And then I would ruin everything. After a stunt like I was planning, none of us would be able to return to Goode High School. Percy and I would have to find a boarding school somewhere and Annabeth would probably just go back to Camp Half-Blood with Will. Thalia would go back to the Hunters and Nico would go back to doing… whatever he was doing before Goode High School. I never thought about it, but this was probably Nico's only shot at high school.

Heat rose in my face as I tried to hold back my anger. "I just came here to meet someone," I stated, choosing my words carefully.

Amy stepped forward and linked her arm through Cara's. "Oh really and who would that be?" she said, staring at Will with a interest that made me want to stick her in the hurricane with her friend.

I focused less on natural disasters and more on the Snobs annoying questions. _I obviously came to this mall to stalk you like you're stalking my brother._

Sophie giggled and swung her hundred-dollar purse back and forth. "Please, Amy, it's obviously the boy who has his arms wrapped around her."

That pretty much killed our conversation. But I was more than okay with that. I was ready to lock every boy at Camp Half-Blood away until all the silly teenage girls in the world saw sense… or at least until the boys were like thirty and way too old for any girl to be drooling like Mrs. O'Leary in heat.

"Uh, yeah." I backed up a little and Will dropped his arms but grabbed my hand—probably to stop me from hurling something at them. Like the dictionary. Or an English textbook. "See you—"

"So what's your name?" Cara said, ignoring me and zoning in on my boyfriend with her freaky fake-eyelashed gaze. She and her band of nuts had stepped forward to close the space between us, trapping us in a conversation again.

Will smirked and almost suppressed a laugh, but some of it came through. Here I was, trying not to kill the girls who were hitting on him in front of me and what was he doing? Helping? No, no. He was _laughing_.

I pinched him as I gave my automatic response. "This is Will. He's my friend."

"Friend?" he teased, not either bothering to acknowledge my efforts to get out of here.

"Fine, then," I muttered under my breath. I shot Will a look and corrected my mistake. "_Boy_-friend."

"Cute…" Amy said, glancing away. She sighed and stepped back like she suddenly couldn't stand to be near for one more second. I didn't blame her. All demigods tended to give off a weird vibe, but these girls were either completely oblivious or really determined to get to know us. Both of those options we're pretty stupid, though.

"Yeah," Sophie said, taking Amy's arm and pulling her back toward us, "so what'd you two meet?"

I smirked. "Summer camp," I told her honestly.

"Wait," Cara said, shifting her weight from one obnoxiously highheel to the other. "Do you mean the same summer camp where you learned to play soccer—?"

Will raised an eyebrow at me but I quickly nodded. "The one and only," I said, knowing Will wouldn't ask questions until later. "Well, talk to you…" _…hopefully never again._ "Um…" I scratched my arm and tried to focus again. Stupid ADHD—these girls probably thought I had developed a stuttering problem!

Cara giggled again like she was enjoying my discomfort. "I'll talk to you later today, silly!"

I stepped back more as she tried to pat my arm again. "Huh?"

She flipped her hair, looking extremely pleased with herself. "Percy and I have plans," she said, striving for casual but ending up with smug.

"Oh, yeah," I muttered. "The History project." If I didn't get a hold on my patience before tonight, Manhattan was going to be underwater by sundown.

"Yeah," Cara said, checking her nails.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my escape. Annabeth was just clearing off a large table while Percy dumped her shopping bags on the ground and dragged over a few extra needed chairs. As Cara brushed invisible dust from her blouse, I quickly muttered a goodbye and then dragged Will away before they said anything else.

I forced myself to walk casually away from the Snobs—never run from some prey that might chase after you—but I knew that I looked ready to murder someone. (Frankly, I was surprised Will still had enough guts to be holding my hand, but then again, he was Will.)

"So that was—?"

"We'll talk later," I promised, cutting off my boyfriend's sentence. "I need to calm down first."

He shrugged. "Just let me know when you're ready to laugh about it."

Unwillingly, half my mouth tilted up in a lopsided grin. How this boy could make me glare and sort of smile at the same time was beyond me, but I guess love is truly a mystery.

Thankfully, we made it to the table without any casualties. Annabeth greeted Will and Percy started warning me about the homecoming dress his girlfriend had picked for me—apparently, it was a one-shouldered pink dress that he was convinced I will "completely loathe" but must wear. I half-listened to him until I literally couldn't stand it anymore. "Uh, yeah. That's great, Percy," I said, running a hand through my hair. "Thanks for the heads-up."

My brother stared at me for a second like I was from Mars then shrugged, muttering about girls acting "super weird." He turned and began talking with Will. While the boys were distracted, I grabbed Annabeth's arm and tugged her down into the chair next to me.

"Annabeth, she's here," I stated. I knew Annabeth would need an explanation about exactly who I was talking about. My attitude made it pretty clear.

"She didn't make a move on…" She carefully tilted her head towards Will and my eyes flickered to my boyfriend.

I nodded and sat back in my chair with a huff. "She did," I told Annabeth.

Her eyes widened a little. "Do you think she's switched her focus? Or is she just mad at you?"

I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought about the Snobs attitude around Will compared to Percy. They were all still flirty, but it was definitely less stalk-ish with Will then with Percy. "Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Percy's still her main target," I finally admitted.

Annabeth sighed, obviously expecting—but not enjoying—my answer. "Me, too. I would say it was wishful thinking, but I think I'm probably better able to handle her going after my boyfriend than you would be."

"Hey," I snapped… and then thought about how close I had come to killing them. "Okay, fine."

Annabeth laughed and I shook my head. _Thanks to those girls, _I thought to myself, glancing at Will and Percy, _I'm going to go officially insane._

After Thalia and Nico joined us and we had eaten enough food to shut the boys up for a while, Nico stretched and then broke the silence that had followed our epic feast. "So what are we going to do now?"

Dangerous question. Percy and I immediately glanced at each other and I knew exactly what we were going to do. We grinned and I sat forward, tucking my hands under my chin. "How far can you shadow-travel, Nico?" I asked in my best negotiating voice.

"Why?" His eyes narrowed and darted between Percy and me like he was afraid this was a trap.

"Let's go…" Percy started dramatically, lifting one of his hands off the table.

"To the beach!" I finished, reaching over and returning my brother's high-five.

Everyone stared at else for a second like we nuts—and then Thalia shrugged with a half-smile. "Why not?"

* * *

><p>The beach turned out to be a good idea, thank you very much.<p>

We ended up playing a game of king of the rock on a pile of sand near the edge of the water—but it quickly became a battle of the Poseidon twins so the game had to stop. Apparently, when your dad is literally the king of the beach, it kind of kills the game for everyone else. Personally, I think everyone else was being picky but the game had to end anyway. Annabeth sullenly reminded all of us that "the devil" would be arriving within the hour—and some of us needed showers.

Before we had left the mall, I had grabbed Will's extra camp T-shirt and a pair of my board shorts from his car. (We learned pretty earlier in this relationship that sudden monster attacks left most demigods covered in dust or slime so it was good to always be prepared for this kind of stuff.) Now, I didn't bother changing since I hadn't bothered getting wet at the beach, so once Will was clean, the two of us sprawled out on the sofa and attacked a container of Nutella with some spoons. We took up both sides of the L-shaped couch with our heads lying next to each other in the corner space.

"You have to share," I told Will, whacking the part of his arm I could reach with my spoon.

He shook his head and moved the container further from away from me. "Look, I love you, Sunshine, but this is serious stuff. I'm afraid Nutella might be a little too important," he confessed in somber tone, stuffing another spoonful into his mouth.

"Give it!" I repeated for the fourth time. "You can't keep me away from Nutella! It's not fair!"

"The injustice!" he laughed. "How can you stand it!"

I rolled over onto my stomach and leaned closer to him. His laugher died almost instantly. "You know," I said softly, still staring at him, "you _really_ need to learn how to share."

As I moved my hand across his shoulder and carefully made my way down his arm, he raised an eyebrow. "Well, what are you going to give me for it?" he teased.

My hand closed around the top of the container and I slowly smiled. "I think you've learned your lesson," I said, ripping the Nutella jar from his hands and jumping up off the couch.

"You shouldn't have done that!" Will warned me. I laughed and ran for the kitchen—but Will caught me at the doorway.

"Nooo!" I moaned as he carefully took the precious hazelnut spread from my hands. "I'll be good, I promise! Just let me keep it!"

He tossed the jar onto the counter and trapped me against the doorway. "Leila," he said, putting his forehead against mine, "how can possibly take down monsters twice the size of me—but can't even keep a jar of Nutella safe?"

"I don't even that's relevant," I muttered, wrapping my arms around his neck. Carefully, he leaned closer and just as his lips touched mine—the screaming started.

"OH MY GODS!" The two of us immediately jumped apart—causing me to bang my head against the doorframe.

"Nico!" I whined, holding the back of head. "What in Hades' name are you doing?"

"_Me?!_" He sputtered, blinking a few times. "What are _you_ doing? This is a kitchen, for Zeus' sake! Not your bedroom! Don't do that stuff without making sure your alone first! Some things just can't unseen! Gods!" He screamed one more time, running out of the room with his hands covering his eyes.

"You've got Nutella in your hair," Will told me once Nico's yelling had faded. I huffed and made my way over to the sink, growling curses under my breath.

"Your head, okay?" he asked with barely suppressed laugher.

"It's fine," I said, rinsing the sticky spread from my hair, "but Nico might be scarred for life."

Will smirked. "Poor kid. He should have told us he was there."

The doorbell rang. "Just a sec!" I called, turning off the sink. "Nico is never going to let me live this down," I said, moving towards the door with Will. "I swear, he's going to hold it over my head and when I die, he's going to track me down in the underworld just to make sure I haven't forgotten."

"Just make sure to tell your Mom and Paul I said hello before you die," Will said as we reached the door.

I didn't even bother looking through the peep-hole. I could hear Cara Kray impatiently tapping her foot against the floor and I was tempted to make her wait even longer. Will watched me for a second with a smirk, obviously knowing that I was stalling. He leaned down again and before anyone could interrupt us, I quickly closed the distance.

Since Will is the only boy I've ever kissed, I might be a bit biased when I say that it is by far, the best thing on the planet. _Ever._ He always smells like summer bonfires and tastes like strawberries, and I could've happily stood there kissing my boyfriend until the world came crashing done—but then the doorbell rang again.

When Will stepped away, I pulled open the door and glared at Cara with far more hated then necessary. "Percy's in his room," I said as she backed up a few steps.

"Bye, Lays," Will said when Cara didn't make a move to come inside or say anything. "Call you or something," he promised.

I nodded and cursed my inner-little girl for having zero self-control. Part of me was doing happy little cheers and cartwheels at the thought of talking to him again soon—but another part of me was also crying and begging for him not to leave in the first place. "'kay," I said, ignoring both inner-reactions.

Just before the door closed, he winked at me and mouthed _Love you, Sunshine… _and then I knew I would be counting down the seconds until I saw him again.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: So I made this chapter extra long because it's been a while. Sorry! I'll try to make the wait shorter.**** Anyways, reviews are totally and completely ****appreciated and DEFINITELY help me get chapter posted faster ;] Love all of you!)**

******_ACPJ9-_** ****I would NEVER forget about my readers, _. _Sorry the update didn't come before May, though haha****  
><em> .<em>******_Enemy.172_- **Sorry to hear about your teacher! That sounds awful! I hope your class is doing okay!**  
><strong>...and thanks to everyone else who reviewed! I love reading your little notes and idea for the story. You guys seriously keep me motivated!

* * *

><p><strong>Answering last chapter's question:<strong> Personally, I don't like school dances. Yes, I love dancing (even though I have no idea how to do it properly) but I don't like dressing up so SCHOOL dances aren't really my thing... but that's just me haha My guy-friend know me really well so they also know better than to ask me to one the dances anyway so no date for me either, **_Percy'sFavoriteSister_ **;)

**This chapter's question:**  
><em>Have you ever spent the day creeping around like a ninja?<em>

Facebook Page... _Completely Shore_


	8. Phase 7

**Disclaimer: Even though I haven't updated in a while, that does not mean I have gained any sort of right or claim to Percy Jackson. Obviously, I am not Rick Riordan. Therefore, I own nothing.**

* * *

><p>Phase Seven<p>

Even though I was upset about Will leaving, it was probably better after the way I acted in the mall—Annabeth was right. She was better at dealing with the mortal and her evil, conniving, boyfriend-stealing ways.

Anyways, once Will had gone I led Cara into the apartment, holding onto my hope that my home could survive a few hours of mortal invasion. Annabeth had been doing deep breathing exercises on the way back from the beach to calm her nerves, and I found myself doing them now so I could attempt to keep my patience and temper under control.

I stopped in the kitchen and glared at the offending mortal for a minute. Since Percy or Annabeth hadn't finished showering, Cara quickly became my responsibly. I wasn't sure what to do with her—and I definitely wasn't in the mood to babysit—but I couldn't very well leave her alone in my demigod-filled apartment.

The kitchen door was still open, and Thalia and Nico had crashed on the couch, taking my and Will's spot from earlier. The two of them had already dumped their things onto the coffee table and turned up the volume on the TV to blare the local news. Cara just cocked her head to the side, glanced around in disdain, and spun her phone around in her hand.

"Yeah, so," I said, hopping up on the counter to get a better view of the TV screen, "Percy's in his room. He'll be out in a second," I continued, making it obvious Cara was going to wait here in the kitchen until he was done.

The mortal tipped her head towards me in acknowledgment, but didn't say anything. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and flicked away some invisible dirt from the door jam then leaned against it carefully like she was afraid it had lice and was made of Styrofoam. She began tapping on her phone, while I lounged back against the cabinets and figured she could keep herself entertained for a few minutes.

"The devastation took an extreme tool on not only New York, but all over the county," a man said, as photos of last summer's destruction flashed across the screen.

"Well, Rick, the events of last summer seem to have blown over," a women announced cheerfully. Hopeful pictures of volunteers cleaning up storm damage and Red Cross centers appeared and the women proudly gestured to each of the pictures with one of those huge smiles that only TV hosts seemed to possess. "After intense rain, dust storms, fires, tornados, and strong hurricanes, things appear to be looking up."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the mortal's ignorance. "You wish it was only rain, dust, and fire!" I spat out through my teeth. Cara jumped away from the wall from my sudden outburst.

Thalia gave me an exasperated glare. "Leila," she said sharply and shot a look at the mortal.

I risked a glance at Cara and sure enough, she was watching the exchange with an expression that would make anyone with a secret extremely nervous. "What?" she said airily, adjusting her shirt.

Even though Cara seemed to be paying attention, it was obvious the true meaning of what we were saying was going straight over her pretty hairsprayed head. "Nothing," I told her. Thalia rolled her eyes while I smirked at her. If Annabeth had caught me making that comment, she probably would have shaved my head in my sleep, but Thals brushed it off. Her reactions to my slip-ups were definitely one of the reasons we became such fast friends—that, and we both liked irritating Percy.

Cara sighed and checked her cell phone as if we were wasting her life. "So where's Annabeth?"

"She's showering," I answered, ignoring her attitude.

She blinked. "Why?" I wasn't sure why it mattered to her. For all she knew, Annabeth might just like to shower. Of course I wasn't about to give her any reason to think we were weird—or at least weirder than she already thought.

I pawed at my hair and debated whether or not I should tell her the truth. "We went to the beach earlier," I told her, combing more hair over my shoulder.

"Oh…" she trailed, looking at her phone again. The scene flashed and then she glanced out the window like she couldn't imagine wasting away in the sunshine. "It's like September," she finally said. "Isn't the water a little cold to be swimming?"

Gritting my teeth, I tried not to point out that it was _early _September in New York—still plenty warm enough to go to the beach and swim—and honestly there was no expiration date on fun. "Who said we went swimming?" I challenged, realizing I didn't show any sign of actually swimming at the beach.

"Oh," she repeated, flippantly pointing a perfectly manicured finger at my wet hair, "well, I just thought since you all like—"

"Yeah," I interrupted, not caring about the rest of her sentence. "We went swimming. And no," I said, anticipating off her next question, "it wasn't that cold."

Thalia laughed but Nico seemed to control himself a bit better. That is until he said, "It is never too cold for the Jackson's to go swimming." And I realized both of them were making fun of me. They probably had bets about how long I would last without killing her.

"Shut up," I snapped. I glared at them and made it very clear we would be having a very long talk involving my knife and a box of confetti if necessary.

Thalia smirked and stretched her arms—preparing to run away, no doubt. "All right, Annabeth is taking way to long. I guess I'll shower later."

Nico's eyes widen. There was no way he was going to be left alone with me after making comments like that. "Where're you going?" he eyes darted to Thalia's smirk to my sneaky smile to Cara's gaping expression and back.

"I guess I'm going to go for a walk or something," she said casually while tapping her bracelet, signaling that she was going to patrol the area. "Wouldn't want to be a distraction; want to come?"

My smile dropped as Death Breath gave me a triumph grin and agreed to go with Thalia. Nico and Thalia got up and headed for the door. After making sure both cowards were going to be home for dinner, I decided to start cleaning off some couch space. My eyes paused on our Greek textbooks on the coffee table just as Cara started her questioning again. "Nico and Thalia are staying here?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I nodded and I'm pretty sure I made a sound of acknowledgment to go with the nod, but I couldn't completely sure. Greek was a dangerous language around demigods and frankly it was strange seeing the answers so close to a mortal who was so oblivious to the actual answers.

"Um… why?" she said, stepping aside so I could stick the books out of sight. "Can't they like… stay with their own families?"

"Yeah, sure," I stated, giving up on a hiding space and just leaving them on the table. _What's the worst she can do?_ I wondered. Since she hadn't put it together in actual Greek class, I figured we were safe. "That'd be interesting," I continued.

"Wha—"

My heart skipped a beat and I noticed my second—or was it my _third_?—slip-up. _Never leave a loophole_. These were basic things that had been instilled in me for years and the Stolls would kill me if they saw me now. "I'm sorry but I don't think that's really any of your business," I said loudly in my best _shut up now_ tone. (Annabeth taught me that trick.)

Her faced scrunched up so far, I was sure it would get stuck. "Sorry," she purred, twisting her phone in her hand. Suddenly, she smirked. "What's Camp Half-blood?"

I froze and tried to control myself but I knew I was in trouble. The gang was going to murder me—why hadn't anyone reminded me about my kind-of-huge-dead-on-answer-giveaway T-shirt?! Quickly, I began pulling together a lie, but thankfully, Percy slid into the room just in time.

"Hey!" He attempted to smile at Cara—then seemed to give up because he winked at me and tossed a blue hoodie onto the back of the sofa. "What are you guys watching?"

"We _were_ watching the news," I said, gently correcting him and stressing the fact that the TV would be off soon. "You know, we were watching the reports about all the _freak storms_ that happened last summer."

Cara kicked her heels into the carpet a few times to collect our attention. "I heard about that. They were something," she told us, clearly revealing her high opinion.

"Yes," my brother said, hearing but obviously not agreeing with the Snob. "Those storms were something_ else_," he told her, clearly revealing _his_ high opinion.

"Leila!" Annabeth shouted. I jumped about three feet and I swear my heart stopped. "Can I barrow a hair tie?" she went on as I started breathing again. "I think I lost all of mine…"

"Sure!" I quickly agreed. "Go ahead! They're in the top left drawer of my dresser!"

"Thanks!" Annabeth answered. Percy smiled at me and gave me a knowing look. He knew I was fearing Annbeth's reaction to my shirt and I fought the urge to stick my tongue out at him.

Annabeth quickly joined us in the living room and in one calculating look, she managed to take in everything. Cara, Percy, me, and yes—she narrowed her eyes a little when she saw my T-shirt causing me to mentally plead that Percy would keep her in a good mood for the rest of the night because I really loved my hair and definitely didn't want her cutting it off in my sleep. Although to my surprise, she simply greeted Cara with a grimace and then went over to snuggle with her boyfriend—MY TWIN BROTHER—on the sofa.

I gave a look that clearly said _what the heck?! _As an answer, she gave me a long look then sent a nasty look toward Cara; I got the message loud and clear. "Why didn't you borrow one of Thalia's hair ties?" I said to Annabeth, hoping the subject change would help wipe Camp from Cara's mind (and murder from Annabeth's).

"Because they're all black or dark colored," she explained, shrugging. "I wanted something a little more colorful."

I hummed in response, recognizing the look on her face. There was no way I was going to be able to distract her from my T-shirt or Cara. We were both doomed. "Well, Thalia and Nico went for a walk claiming you guys were taking too long and mom will be home in about an hour so let's get to work."

During the time the mortal was actually in the house, Annabeth planned to have the two of us doing homework. In my head though, I had my own plan: doodle a lot and hope Annabeth doesn't notice I'm not doing actual work. (Funny part was, when she explained her plan to everyone on the ride home I don't think she realized that she was repeating "Do not leave Percy and Cara alone" every other sentence.)

"Can I use your bathroom?"

I stared at Cara for a second then decided it was probably safe. After all, what else could I say? _No, go use the neighbor's. Yeah, sorry. We got one of those fluke apartments that came without a bathroom_. "It's there," I told Cara, directing her to the door. Her smile widened a little before she slipped inside and slammed the door in my face.

I considered waiting for her but I could just barely hear what Percy and Annabeth were saying so I got lazy and headed back to the couch hoping the mortal didn't get lost on her way back from our bathroom.

"No, I don't think she's a monster," Annabeth was saying as I came back into the room. "Monsters are smarter than this girl."

"Which is saying something," I finished, crashing back on the cushions.

She raised an eyebrow at me and made a show of reading my shirt. "Who are you to talk about smart?" She threw Percy's sweatshirt in my face. "You know how we don't want mortals to know about Camp Half-Blood?"

Percy openly laughed but at least I knew I was forgiven. I tugged the sweatshirt over my head, probably muttering something very original like, _shut up._

"Now," Annabeth said, glancing at the things I had left out for us, "where are our provisions?"

Immediately, I hopped to my feet and ran for the kitchen. A few days ago, Annabeth and I stocked up on emergency candy, but the hard part was keeping the candy away from other demigods until we needed it. Luckily, it seemed our gummy worms survived any candy raids the boys might have issued.

When I returned with the proper motivation, Annabeth grinned and reached over her makeshift desk of books and papers to grab some candy. "That's more like it!"

Percy looped an arm through Annabeth's and said, "I'm going to go downstairs and find a newspaper. For current events."

Just before he finished, he managed to grab a gummy worm with the hand that was still looped in his girlfriend's elbow. I growled at him and he grinned, almost getting another worm before scurrying out the door.

"What page are we supposed to be on?" I asked Annabeth as the mortal stuttered back into the room looking much more self-righteous than any mortal should when facing to well-armed, dangerous demigods.

The daughter of Athena gave me an exasperated look as if she could already tell I was going to be copying most of her work. "Page thirty," she muttered to me then turned to the mortal. "Percy went downstairs to get a newspaper. We can all work on the couch."

I smirked. Annabeth was good at dealing with annoying people. All she had to do was give them that I-know-what's-best-so-listen-to-what-I'm-telling-y ou voice and combine it with one Thalia worthy glare and anyone in their right mind would back off.

Unfortunately, Cara seemed to _not_ be in her right mind at the moment. She sighed dramatically and took a seat, not bothering to hide her obnoxious irritation. I was so close to snapping, I literally snapped the pencil in my death-grip fist. Annabeth went rigid but didn't freak out. She threw me a look. _Control yourself_, it said.

I took a deep breath. _The sink will not explode, _I ordered myself as calmly as I could manage._ The sink will not explode. The sink will not explode. The sink will not—_

"What are you two working on?"

"We're doing our biology and math homework," I answered Cara, while mentally keeping up my chant.

"Oh." The girl nodded and flipped her hair. A wave of designer perfume floated into the air and I nearly gagged. _That's it,_ I thought_, _trying to breathe through the horrid smell._ What Kronos did to Manhattan is going to look tame when I'm done this semester._

Just as I reached for my knife—the front door was flung open and Percy raced into the room with our cousins following close behind doing what they usually do—arguing.

"So you dragged me off my comfortable spot on the couch for nothing?" Nico growled, stamping his foot like a child.

"Pretty much, yeah," admitted Thalia almost laughing straight in his face. I snorted and Annabeth rolled her eyes then became serious for moment. Thankfully we had gotten good at reading each other expressions. I nodded in response to her and offered to get drinks for everyone.

After collecting some drinks orders but rejecting others—like Nico's request for a coke with a lime and two shots of nectar—I went to the kitchen and nearly made the sink explode. "Stupid mortals always hitting on my brother and making me stress out way past a healthy level of sanity," I muttered, turning on the water and grabbing some cups. I filled Annabeth's water and almost got myself a glass when it occurred to me that I actually might hurt then mortal if there was water within my reach.

I sighed and got out the orange juice. After filling half the glass, Nico's idea suddenly didn't seem so crazy. It took a minute of searching but I found our stash of nectar. Carefully, I started adding just a few drops when a stab of panic abruptly hit me making my hand jolt and dump nearly the entire bottle into my glass and all over the counter.

My eyes widened and I scrambled for a towel. "Darn it, Percy," I breathed, trying to mop up the golden liquid. Sometimes, being a twin was really annoying. In came in handy once in a while, but most of time, being able to experience small moments of Percy's life through my own head was really, really bad.

I tossed the empty nectar bottle into the recycle bin—Demeter would have my head if I didn't try to help save the planet—and made sure Percy could feel my annoyance. "Hey, Annabeth," I said coming back into the living room. "Did you want ice…?" My question faded near the end when I saw the room in front of me.

Thalia was standing in the middle of the room with one hand on her shield, prepared for a fight while Nico glared at the mortal, muttering curses under his breath causing dark shadows to stretch across the floor and creep towards the mortal. Annabeth was glaring straight ahead but her textbook was half-lifted off her lap like she was seriously considering throwing it at someone, or abandoning it and going at the mortal with a knife. And the mortal—_the mortal_ was practically sitting on my brother's lap, giving me a smirk that said she knew exactly what she was doing to everyone around her.

I shoved the water at Annabeth when she got up to get herself ice. "Go chill out a little," I muttered to her as I went to sit down. She gave me a small smirk but the anger didn't fade from her eyes.

Once I was sitting, Nico poked me in the head. "Where's mine?" he asked, wildly motioning towards my drink.

"Get your own," I stated, holding my cup out of his reach.

He poked me again. "Copy cat," he complained.

During the time when Nico distracted me, Cara took major advantage of his girlfriend being gone and scooted impossibly closer to Percy (who was officially making my head burn with his own anxiety). It was clear force would be required to make this girl get a clue and keep her hands—and all other appendages—to herself. But by the time I was ready to take action, Annabeth had returned.

So it might have been a strange coincidence or Annabeth may have had a little help, but either way (honestly, I wasn't sure it mattered) as soon as she went to sit back in her seat, the glass of water she was holding in her hand slipped and it fell from her hand dumping water _All. Over. The. Mortal._

I had never been so proud of Annabeth in my life.

Cara leaped out of her seat like she had been set on fire and immediately started screaming while Annabeth quickly apologized and tried to tame the Chaos of the situation.

_That was a sneaky move,_ I thought attempting to muffle my laugher with Nico and Percy. Thalia rushed off to get a towel—and of course, once she was out of the room, you could hear her laughter echo through the apartment. I wasn't sure the mortal noticed, but Annabeth definitely did judging by the glare she gave us.

"You can borrow one of my shirts if you want," Annabeth told Cara when it looked like the mortal had given up on trying to dry her shirt.

Cara groaned and tried her hair in a bun. "I'm fine," she replied, peeling the front of her shirt off her skin. "It'll dry," she grumbled under her breath.

"No, really, I'll get one," Annabeth insisted, taking Cara's elbow and leading her down the hall obviously leaving no room for argument (or a wet-and-see-through shirt idea).

Once we heard the door click shut, we finally lost it.

"I-can't-believe-she-did-that!" Thalia wheezed between laughter.

"For a second, I thought _you_ did it!" Nico said to me. "But then—then I saw your face!" He burst out laughing again and actually fell off the sofa.

After a few seconds, I tried to start bringing things to the table—but since I was still laughing, I couldn't keep a very good grip on anything.

Percy snickered. "We seriously need to calm down. That was kind of mean."

"Kind of mean?" Thalia repeated. "Percy, she was sitting on your lap—"

"Practically," I corrected.

Thalia ignored me, tossing one of the books at Nico. (It was a bad throw though, so Nico ended up doing a ninja roll to catch it properly.) "—at your house, on your couch, _in front of your girlfriend_. She deserved it."

My brother laughed a once more and then got up to help me move some books. Annabeth came back just as we were taking our seats around the table. She leaned against the back of my chair and I held out my hand.

"Alright," she said, meeting my high-five then turning to Thalia. "Since you're the only one of us girls who doesn't want to kill her every time you see her—"

Thalia cocked an eyebrow. "Who says I don't?" she protested.

Annabeth rolled her eyes in response. "Fine. Since you're the only one of us girls who hasn't already done her or her clothing physical harm," she corrected, "will you go and get her shirt to put it in the dryer?" After letting out an overly dramatic sigh, Thalia agreed and headed towards the bathroom, loudly dragging her feet all the way down the hall.

When Nico started snickering again, I knew the rest of the night would be easier. "Did you see how she freaked out when her shirt got wet? Like she was going to die!" He described, badly imitating Cara's facial expression before leaning over me to give Annabeth another high-five.

My brother leaned over and gave his girlfriend a well-deserved kiss, but I still couldn't fight the urge to throw-up. A gagging noise rose up from the back of my throat and Annabeth glowered down at me from over my chair. (I can admit—for a moment I did fear for my life.) She leaned in a bit closer. "Please, Leila. You know if Will were here you'd be even worse."

I wanted to argue that I saw Will a whole lot less than Annabeth saw Percy but instead, I hissed at her like a cat that had swallowed a bag of bees. She finally relaxed, swinging around to sit in her chair between Percy and I with a smile.

I shook my head and laughed a little. _Maybe the rest of the night won't be so bad._

* * *

><p>The questions started sometime after the mortal returned to the room wearing my shirt but definitely before the epic pillow fight that could've totally counted as World War III.<p>

Cara began with the basics. "So why are all you guys living together again?" she asked, tapping her fingers against the table while her laptop booted-up.

We had anticipated this and Annabeth had helped each of us come up with perfect cover stories. I smirked and got ready to see her face. "Well, Percy and I are what you call siblings—" I started slowly, preparing to launch into a full-scale explanation of how inconveniently annoying this had been for me over the years, but Annabeth smacked me in silence.

"My parents live out in San Francisco," Annabeth explained, ignoring the scowl I sent her. "They're letting me stay here so I can go to school with Percy and—" _be close to Olympus to oversee the building going on there, _I finished in my head.

Cara must have been satisfied with the rest of Annabeth's answer because she switched her target to Nico and Thalia, quickly throwing question at both of them like some kind of professional lawyer or redheaded oracle.

"I'm a Dutch transfer student from Norway," Nico told her seriously and I nearly fell out of my chair. Percy and I had made a bet about how Nico would answer and now I owed my brother a sharing-size bag of peanut M&Ms because of that answer! "I was only kidding!" Nico admitted after Thalia lopped him in the arm with her textbook.

"Apparently," I said sourly, still mourning from the lost bet while thinking of Annabeth reaction to my own answer, "humor has been banned from the house-hold for the time being." Percy grinned at me over his girlfriend's head (the idiot knew he'd won) and I just shook my head at him in disgust.

"Whatever." Nico shrugged. "My mom died a long time ago and I'm staying with the Jacksons."

"What about your dad?" Cara continued, not missing a beat.

"He has a full-time job out in Hollywood. It's pretty time consuming so I came here for school."

"Wow." Cara nodded in approval like Nico had passed some type of test. "I get it. My dad's job takes him away a lot. I don't see him too much but whatever. I don't really mind." She shrugged one shoulder and flipped her hair before turning to Thalia.

Lesser heroes would've back off due to the look Thalia gave the mortal, but Cara was obviously determined to continue until she got the answer she was looking for. I guess we could blame on the fact that she just didn't truly know how dangerous Thalia could be with a bow. Or shield. Or spear. Or sword. Or—okay. You get the picture.

I held my breath and tensed when the Hunter narrowed her eyes at the idiotic blonde who was seriously treading into the hazardous, unchartered waters of Thalia's patience. "I'm usually with my… guardian," she finally answered. I let out a breath while Thalia finished her small explanation and silently prayed Cara was done playing Sherlock Holmes for the night.

"Huh." Cara paused and entered her password into her computer.

Even though I was across the table, I was still able to figure it out. Spending so much time with Travis and Connor definitely came in handy, _especially_ when it came to cracking codes and finding out passwords. I may not be able to explain exactly how it's done—it has become an instinct to me after all these years and trying to explain it would be like trying to explain how to blink—but I can say that in a matter of seconds I was able to tell that Cara's laptop password was _queenoftheworld899_.

I smirked, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Annabeth roll her eyes—she knew I got it. (I can't even count how many times Annabeth has had to change the password on Daedalus' laptop to keep me from replacing her home screen to pictures of Party Ponies advertisements.)

Cara looked up from her laptop again, completely unaware that her privacy has been partially invaded from across a dining table. "So do you all have any brothers or sisters? I'm an only child and I never wanted any brothers or sisters."

Percy twirled Riptide (in pen form, of course) in his fingers. "Well, I always wanted to be an only child," he admitted, "but you know, we all have dreams."

"Oh, ha ha," I mocked. "Thalia, Nico, and I are cousins," I told Cara as Percy just snickered at my expression and set down his sword—eh, I mean pen.

Cara leaned across the table. "Mom or dad's side?" she asked and—before anyone had a chance to stop her—picked up Riptide from where Percy had left it.

"Dad's," I answered her and turned the page of my textbook to try and distract her from my horrified expression. Annabeth loudly cleared her throat and then I heard a nice firm _whack!_ echo as Thalia landed a well-aimed kick at Percy's shins.

That must have jolted Percy because the mouth-gaping expression on his face disappeared and he looked down at the newspaper with only a pair of maybe-too-wide eyes.

Annabeth muttered something to Percy under her breath while my mind raced a million miles an hour—_why would Percy leave it on the table? What if she uncaps it? Why couldn't it be designed to instantly reappear in his pocket?! That would have solved a lot of problems for us over the years!_

As Riptide did another spin in her preppy polished fingered hand, I think I lost another little bit of my sanity. "Anyone got a pen I could borrow?" I blurted out.

The pen/sword froze in her hand. Cara slowly looked up and met my gaze across the table.

For a second, I really thought she wasn't going to give it to me, but then she spun it once more and handed it to me. As I reached over and received the pen, I could hear Annabeth let out a breath and feel Percy's relief.

* * *

><p>Time passed and most of it was filled with battling Chaos. Cara continued her mindless babbling only louder, since she was now trying to be heard over Nico's loud complaints about needing Annabeth's help with homework but the daughter of Athena was too busy telling her boyfriend to focus because Percy just kept checking his pocket every two minutes to make sure he still had Riptide and then he would let out this great sigh of relief every time he found it which apparently started to annoy Thalia so she began snarling about needing to get better friends and more sleep while I'm just over in the corner. Banging my head against the table.<p>

"Do you guys have a printer?" Cara shouted at us over Nico moaning, _PLEASSSSSSE ANNABETTTH!_ for about the billionth time.

"SHUT UP, DEATH BREATH!" Thalia roared as Percy nodded and told Cara that yes, we were indeed 21st century individuals that owned a printer.

Okay. He may not have worded it exactly like that, but that was the paraphrased version.

Once Percy stood up, I decided it was probably my turn to play Babysit the Mortal. "I'm done with math, Annabeth. If I do anymore my head will explode." Even though I had never really started, it was still the truth. For me, math was almost as bad as English. It made my brain hurt. (Percy always likes to say: "If your homework seems easy, you're definitely doing it wrong.")

"I guess I am, too," Annabeth said, not looking up from her work. I looked at the paper over her shoulder and rolled my eyes when I saw her latest temple design instead of the trinomials worksheet that we were supposed to have done—she had probably finished an hour ago which made me want to roll my eyes again.

_Stupid too-smart-for-her-own-good daughter of the wisdom goddess, _I thought bitterly a few minutes later as I slumped down onto my bed.

Percy dragged our only printer out the closet. "You don't have it set up?" Cara asked, glancing between Percy and I like she couldn't understand how we lived without constant basic technology.

Percy shrugged. "We've only ever had to use it a couple of times. We do most of our work at the school."

"Why?" she asked, stepping around a pair of sneakers to stand awkwardly close to Percy again.

My brother maneuvered the printer around on his desk while simultaneously pushing a chair in between him and Cara. "Technology doesn't really mix well with d—," he caught his mistake before it was too late, and ended quickly ended his sentence. "—with, uh, us."

"More like hates us," I added, trying to make Percy's slip up less noticeable.

To prove my point, I told Percy to pass me the stereo remote. Just as I had mentally predicted, the stereo did what it usually did and blasted some of Thalia's music around the room at a level that would make emo-teenagers everywhere proud.

Cara almost jumped out of her skin so I turned down the music. "So," she started her voice slightly higher than usual from the stereo scare, "how long have you been dating Annabeth?"

Percy eyes flashed to me, gauging my opinion on what we should reveal to the outsider. After another millisecond, we had both decided this question would be harmless. "About two months."

Cara looked entirely too smug. "Huh," she responded, almost smiling—but practically not in a good way. The smile looked a cat when it finally finds the mouse it had been hunting.

I shifted, positioning myself out of the mortal's vision, and quickly motioned for Percy to keep going and elaborate further. I wanted Cara to know what she was messing with.

"But," Percy continued slowly, "we've been best friends since we were twelve." I gave him a thumbs-up to tell him he was headed in the right direction. _Let's shake her confidence a little._

The predator glint in her eyes dimmed a bit, but her expression barefly changed. "So, you two met at summer camp when you were twelve?"

Percy hummed in agreement and went back to fiddling with the printer. It was clear he would rather hang out with printers than make conversation with Cara, but she pressed on, trying to coax out as much information as possible.

"So, you two just, like, hung out for a weeks of the summer—"

I should've have said it and it didn't make me proud, but this mortal was pushing my buttons. There was only one girl good enough for my twin brother, and that girl was Annabeth Chase.

"We're at camp all summer," I blurted, making the mortal glance over her shoulder in contempt. I had obviously stopped her in the middle of her self-important point.

"Well, then," she crossed her arms over her crest. "Two or three months out of about five years—"

Percy stopped her this time. "We have been through a lot together." I shook my head and laughed under my breath. He was giving her just enough information to stay curious. He was teasing her.

"Whatever," she barked at us, stopping my laughter. "So," she continued again after a deep, calming breath, "you and Annabell—"

My eyes widened. She did not just make that mistake "Anna_beth_," he told her, glaring while his fingers twitched towards Riptide.

"Anna_beth_," she repeated, rolling her eyes to indicate she could seriously care less about his girlfriend's name, "are pretty serious?"

I guess Percy truly tried not to smile. But thinking about a long-term romantic relationship with Annabeth always made him turn to mush in a majorly giddy type of way because he ended up beaming at the mortal with the rays of a thousand suns. "I guess so," he said happily.

Cara rolled her eyes again and pushed herself away from the desk. "So, have you ever had any other girlfriends?" she asked, looking at a few of the pictures on the wall.

I narrowed my eyes at her back while my brother shrugged. "Not really."

The mortal didn't seem very satisfied with this answer. _Where is she going with this? _I wondered suspiciously. She whirled around suddenly, making more waves of her perfume float around the room. It would take weeks to get that smell out of here. "So—"

"If you start another sentence with _so_," I snapped, channeling my inner-Thalia to glare at her, "I will smack you."

"Uh, o-okay," she stuttered. "Why do you all only hang out with each other?"

"What?"

"Well, I mean, you five are, like… _always _together. It's just…" Her unfinished sentence hung in the air like her hideous perfume, but she didn't have to say it.

Every demigod gave off that strange aura and all of us together probably made things worse. _Weird,_ I thought. _We're just weird._

"We're friends," I said aloud instead, mentally deciding that was almost the same as being weird. "You hang out with your friends. We hang out with ours. What's the big deal?" My voice sounded flat and monotone, but I don't think the mortal even noticed.

"Yeah," Percy agreed. Then he met my gaze and smirked. "We have a lot in common."

That broke the mood. I started laughing. "Oh, yes."

Cara gave us a scowl and I almost thought she was going to stomp her foot in frustration. "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

"Nothing," Percy and I immediately said in unison, which of course, only served to make us laugh harder.

Her frustration seemed to fade into confusion. "Huh?" she said hopelessly.

I smirked, joining in with Percy's game. "We just all go to camp together and stuff."

"Yeah," Cara said slowly, still obviously confused, "where is this camp?"

"New York," Percy told her easily.

"I guessed _that_ much," she said as if directions were rocket science. "What part of New York?"

"Stupid printer!" Percy shouted, smacking the electronic until it loudly sputtered to life.

"Did you get it to work?" I asked, taking advantage of the distraction.

He filled the paper tray. "Yeah."

"Then why did you call it stupid?" I said and Percy shot me a look that clearly said, _why didn't YOU set up the printer?_

"I don't know, Leila. It just is," he finally admitted as if that explained everything. "Now, here, plug this into your laptop and it should start printing."

Cara followed Percy's instruction and then started poking around at things on Percy's desk. "What's this?" Cara asked, holding up a book for us to see. The title read: _Great Greek Architecture._

I shrugged. _It's probably Annabeth's_, I thought and grabbed a tennis ball off of my nightstand. "A book," I stated, tossing the ball up and catching it. "Ever seen one before?"

"Sure. I've seen books," she responded casually. "In_ English_."

The tennis ball slipped out of my hand and whacked me straight in between the eyes. Percy whispered some word of surprise and yanked the book from Cara's hands. By the time her small, slow, mortal brain had caught up, the book was already stacked under several blankets in the closet.

She blinked. "What language is that?"

Before either of us could come up with an excuse, Cara comtinued talking like she didn't expect an answer anyway. "Besides, I thought you guys we're dyslexic. Why do you have books away?"

I smirked. _Gotcha_.

I stopped Percy who was either getting ready to either a) use one of our usual excuses or b) scream for Annabeth, and turned to Cara. "How did you know we were dyslexic?" I asked her slowly.

She froze then faced with a faux-smile plastered across her face. "I just heard it somewhere."

It could've been true. Goode might be a—um, well, a good school, but we were still teenagers and teenagers still loved gossip. "Why do you automatically assume rumors are true?" I asked her.

Cara crossed her arms. "Does that mean I'm wrong?" she said, jutting one hip to the side in a defiant gesture. Clearly, she was just as willing as we were to give up answers.

I rolled my eyes. "I didn't say that."

"Well, as far as I knew, dyslexic people have trouble reading," she told us, as if we would've already know this piece of vital information. "Why have books if you can't read?"

_You can't read_.

_We_… can't read…? _WE CAN'T READ?!_

Percy was gaping at the mortal as if he couldn't believe she had the nerve to say that. Frankly, neither could I. "Who says we can't read?" I demanded, pushing myself up off the bed.

Cara's retort was on the very tip of her tongue when Annabeth pushed open the door. She leaned against the doorway, seeming pretty casual considering she knew she was walking into a warzone. "Hey, you guys are getting a little loud—"

The mortal whipped towards Annabeth and barked one, harsh laugh. "What? Are we cutting into your study time?" she mocked.

And that's how the situation went from bad… to worse.

Percy immediately dropped what he was doing and got that certain expression on his face—it was the expression that I had the pleasure of seeing on his face firsthand for five years. He was ready to defend his girlfriend—his _best friend_—at all costs.

Annabeth's eyes flickered angrily to Percy and then back Cara. "I just came to see what all the shouting was about," she said, attempting to calm for Percy's sake.

"Well, we're fine without you," I told her harshly.

And that's how the situation from worse to downright horrific. Percy's eyes widened. My mouth fell open. Annabeth's fists clenched and her hand inched towards her knife.

Percy gave a loud shout then pointed at the printer. "It's done printing!" he said desperately.

I sighed in relief and fell back on my bed. "Oh, well then."

Before another argument could start, Annabeth quickly made her escape. Percy glanced longingly at the door for second the same way I had after Will had left, then shook his head and pulled the report out of the printer tray.

Cara seemed slightly subdued now that she had inflicted a part of her anger on someone. "Is it hard?" she suddenly asked.

Percy was rushing to finish the report now. He obviously wanted to get rid of her, but Cara didn't look like she noticed. "What?"

"Is it hard being dyslexic hard?" she said, returning to our earlier conversation.

Percy met my gaze. _Your turn to deal with this._

I rolled my eyes at him, but got his message. "What do you think?" I said to the mortal, distracting her as Percy continued finishing the project. "Can you even imagine what it's like not being able to read the simplest of books?"

I didn't bother telling her that I could read simple books—after all, I'm dyslexic, not stupid—but talking to her is like trying to explain algebra to a kindergartener. It's possible, but the process is painful and the results aren't worth it.

"I don't really read a lot," she admitted.

I'm not a cruel person. I don't particularly like being mean, but the fact that she doesn't read much was not groundbreaking news. I just couldn't help myself from saying, "Somehow that doesn't surprise me. You _can _read," I said, probably emphasizing her ability to read a little more than necessary, "and you don't even think about how easy it is."

Her eyebrows scrunched together in concentration. "So… you hate it?" she guessed, trying to understand what I was saying.

"Who said anything about hating it?" Percy said, signing the bottom of the report.

Cara threw up her hands. "Wait, so—"

I cut her off with a small glare. "Watch it. I let it slide once," I told her. "Not sure if I will again."

She gave an indigent huff but relented, causing all the jewelry she was wearing to jingle as she crossed her arms. "But you guys don't hate it?"

Percy shrugged one shoulder like it wasn't a big deal. "Nah. Our dyslexia… well, it comes with perks."

I smirked. "Some perks," I agreed, twisting my favorite bracelet around my wrist. "Most of the time though, this whole situation gets annoying."

Percy nodded once at me in agreement and Cara appeared as confused as ever. "What situation is this situation exactly?" she said, struggling to keep up with the scattered directions of our conversation.

"Never mind," my brother said, dropping the papers onto his desk.

He motioned for Cara to sign the report and she took a pen from off the desk—thankfully, it wasn't Riptide this time. "Where is your dad?"

I laughed a little in relief when she clicked the end of the pen. Definitely not Riptide. _As if Percy could survive with a click-able pen,_ I thought in amusement. "What is this? Twenty questions?" I replied to Cara absentmindedly. Even though she was technically getting closer to the truth, there was no logical way she would ever be able to figure out our dad was Poseidon. She would have to be even more insane than we originally thought.

The mortal must had heard something in my tone because she rounded on me, pointing the pen in my face—_Like a sword,_ I thought, cracking a smile. "I'm just curious," Cara said. "Does that mean you're not going to answer? Because really it would probably be weirder if you don't."

It took me a minute to recognize her tone, and once I did, I almost couldn't reign in my laughter. "Are you… _threatening_ us?" I asked her slowly. It's not like Percy and I haven't been threatened (or warned, cursed, yelled at, etc.) before, it had just been a while since I had heard one quite so pathetic.

"We just don't live with him," Percy told her honestly. "Our dad, I mean."

"Divorce can be hard," Cara said, trying to sympathize. "My parents almost got divorced a while ago, but you know, they didn't want to have to slip the company."

Divorce. I rolled my eyes. _If only my parents had divorced… _Percy gave me a look and then prompted Cara to continue. "The company?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. It was obvious he was trying to keep her talking, but I wasn't exactly sure why. He could be trying to avoid another argument or meltdown, or he could be trying to keep the topic away from anything demigod related. Sometimes it was hard to tell what my brother was thinking since 90% of his ideas are crazy.

Cara sighed dramatically. "Yeah. My parents own a few airports around the world so my dad is always visiting a different one—to make sure things are running smooth—while my mom does financial stuff from home."

Her parents company explained the money, but it didn't explain her bad attitude. Percy shuffled some report papers. "Oh, do you visit other countries a lot?"

"Yep! My friends and I have spent weeks in Rome, Paris, London, Spain—," she marked each place with a tick of her fingers and then shrugged. "all over really. I've only ever been in the Asia area a few times, though," she confessed like she was sharing a deeply embarrassing secret.

"Do you speak any other languages?"

"I'm no good at other languages," she said, shaking her head vehemently. "I have enough trouble with English."

Percy was trying to distract Cara so I did the only natural thing for a little sister—I brought the subject back to the thing he was avoiding. "Sometimes... you find out it's easy to learn other languages," I said cryptically. Percy's eyes narrowed.

"And how is that possible?" Cara smirked at me.

I smiled slowly at Percy and he quickly fired off another question. "Have you ever been somewhere with your family?" he asked the mortal quickly.

She rounded on Percy with an _are you kidding me?_ expression. "What?"

Touchy subject. "Haven't you ever been on trip with just your parents?"

"No," she said sharply. "Why would I? Parents are boring," she continued so heatedly that I'd bet she didn't even notice when she answered her own question.

"You shouldn't say that about all parents," I told her, fluffing one of my pillows.

"Yeah." Percy let out a long breath and I could almost see him waving a white flag in surrender. "Sometimes, I wish my parents were boring."

Once I was completely sure the pillow was as fluffy as it would ever be, I chucked it as hard as I could at Percy's head. Of course he's literally invincible so he didn't even flinch when it hit him square in the face. "Oh, shut up," I said as he grinned in satisfaction.

"Don't give me that!" he told me, motioning to my sassy attitude. "You do, too!"

"I won't deny it. The thought has passed through my head once and while," I admitted and blocked myself with another pillow, using it like my shield at camp.

"Oh, really?" Percy teased, taking his own pillow.

I knew I was in trouble. Percy's aim wasn't as good as mine—that was just a fact—but even if I hated to admit it, he was a lot stronger. I hurled my second pillow and almost made it to my hiding spot behind my bed when Percy's pillow hit me.

"Hey!" I squeaked, tumbling off the side of the bed. "That hurt," I groaned and pushed myself up off the floor.

Percy was poised for a fight. He was gripping Riptide in one hand and a pillow in his other like he hadn't decided which weapon he was going to spar with. Deciding there was no way I was going to win the fight anyway, I charged straight at him and tackled him, knocking both of us over and sending the report papers flying everywhere.

Just as Percy put me a headlock, the front door squealed open. "Hello? Anyone home?"

"Mom!" I said and my brother immediately released me, rushing towards the door.

When Percy and I raced into the room, Annabeth was just taking a box of Paul's things from our mom. Percy quickly gave Mom a hug and then took the boxes from his girlfriend. "How was your day?" I asked.

My mom leaned over and gave me a tight hug. "It was good. Paul and I almost have his whole apartment packed up."

I grinned at my mother's obviously enthusiasm. "That's great. When do you think he'll be ready to move—"

"I guess I'll head out." The voice cut like a whip. The mortal was standing in the hallway entrance with her lips pursed in silent judgment. The mortal make-up laden eyes flashed to each of us in a mix of confusion and distain. She wasn't the center of attention anymore and she knew it.

My mom's eyes widened while Annabeth's eyes narrowed. Percy shifted uncomfortably as Nico calmly crossed his arms. Cara hugged her laptop to her crest like a shield and my hand inched toward my dagger, daring the mortal to say something.

Thalia finally broke the tension and ushered the mortal into the hall. "I'll get your shirt."

Cara tipped her head toward Thalia—her way of saying thanks, I guess—and spun on her heel, already walking down the hall as she said, "I'll wait in the bathroom."

Percy and I simultaneously let of a sigh of relief. Our mom raised an eyebrow. "Who is…?"

My mom began unpacking the groceries she brought home while Percy practically growled, "My History project partner."

This time, both eyebrows shot up. "And what happened to her shirt?" my mom asked, turning away from her task and giving her son her full attention.

Thalia ambled back into the kitchen as Nico started laughing hysterically. Percy's face flooded with color and his girlfriend dipped her head in shame. "Science experiment gone wrong?" I offered, steering the conversation away from Percy.

She just put her hands on her hips in the knowing-attitude that only mother's processed. "Percy was doing science experiments with his _History _partner?" she prompted, not even glancing away from Percy.

"Don't you mean_ Biology_ experiments?" Thalia muttered under her breath. Annabeth shoved her elbow into Thalia's ribs and I bit back a laugh as Nico sneaked Thalia a fist bump.

"Someone spilled water on it," Nico said, smirking.

And then my mom turned to face me. She gave me a hard stare that obviously said, _we talked about this_.

"What?" I said as innocently as I could.

My mom didn't even blink. "Don't give me that look!" I said, ducking my head and scurrying behind Percy for protection. "It wasn't me!"

Percy stuck his arm around me, further shielding me from view while also shoving Nico in front of us. Our mom gave us both a doubtful look, but began her task again so the worst was over. "Uh-huh," she murmured, popping to cans of soup into the cabinet.

There was only one person she wouldn't punish—the actually offender. "It wasn't," I said honestly. "It was Annabeth."

The daughter of Athena covered her face in horror and I skipped out from behind Percy. My mom rolled her eyes. "Annabeth wouldn't…" The words died in her throat when she caught sight of Annabeth, shamefully peering through her fingers.

Immediately, my mom covered her mouth—but not before a quick laugh escaped. Annabeth looked down, letting her hair fall in front of her face. The poor girl was so embarrassed. She really admired our mom. I almost felt bad for ratting her out.

"Oh, Honey," my mom gently pulled Annabeth's hands away. "Please to me my children aren't corrupting you," she said seriously.

Annabeth laughed weakly and shook her head, her cheeks still tinged with pink. "Sally, I—"

"Don't even worry about it," she said, putting an arm around Annabeth's shoulder. "A little water isn't going to hurt anyone." Percy and I exchanged a knowing look. Mom had been telling the two of us the exact opposite for sixteen years. Annabeth glanced over at us like she knew what we were thinking.

"Besides," our mom continued suddenly, her eyes lighting up with mischief, "I'm sure that rotten girl deserved it."

Thalia and Nico cracked up while Percy and I began clapping to show that we both completely agreed and Annabeth relaxed, joining in with the laughter.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: Oh, my... I love Sally so much. I hope you guys adore her as much as me. Ha-ha :) Anyways. As usual, updating took me for-ever but this chapter was extra long because of the wait. Thanks to everyone who reviewed/put this story in their alert/favorites!****)**

* * *

><p><strong>Answering last chapter's question:<strong> If creeping around like a ninja was a sport, I would have a gold medal by now! I love acting like a ninja! It's too fun! And I also loved hearing about your many ninja-adventures! They were seriously awesome. Thanks for sharing!

**This chapter's question:**  
><em>How many people wanted Cara to actually full-out uncap Riptide? COULD YOU IMAGINE HER FACE?!<em>

My Facebook page for your fancy and fun would be _Completely Shore_


	9. Phase 8

**Disclaimer: ****From the bottom of my heart, I apologize for my updating sucky-ness. I'm so sorry—but HELLO TO PERCY JACKSON FANS OLD AND NEW! I missed you guys so let's everyone not owning the PJO series together, eh? Cool ;)**

* * *

><p>Phase Eight<p>

My head was pounding. My vision was swimming. My mouth was dryer than a desert. My heart was pounding like I had been fighting the Titan army all morning. My stomach wanted to reject the breakfast I had eaten—and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't block out the screaming that continued to scrap against the sides of my skull.

Tiny voices rose up from all corners of the classroom. I had been hearing the screams all day but also knew there wasn't anything I could do about it. The other people in class ignored it, but some other kids had a tightening around their eyes or a grimace on their face—like they _could_ hear but assumed it was their imagination. I took another deep breath and tightened my grip on the deadly weapon. Even after years of training, my hands unwillingly shook harder.

"You don't have to do this," Annabeth said, breaking her vow of silence. Despite her grouchiness toward her boyfriend and I this morning, she still managed to show a small faction of sympathy.

However, she continued twirling her own weapon effortlessly as if this whole situation didn't bother her at all. I pursed my lips at her relaxed stance. No matter how smart she was, Annabeth truly didn't understand what she was about to do—or maybe she did and it just didn't bother as much. After all, she was one of the lucky ones who didn't hear the screaming.

It had been a stressful morning and I would've liked to think that none of this would have happened if Percy and I hadn't been such idiots.

Earlier, the two of us were hidden behind the bleachers and for the second day in a row. I was attempting the hopeless task of teaching him how to play Mythomagic.

I sighed, slipping off one of the metal bars and adjusting onto the grass. "Percy, you don't want to your Zeus against my Athena. I'd crush you."

My brother's eyebrows were sewed together again just like they had been yesterday. "And I don't want to use him because…?"

At this rate, he would never learn. I rolled my eyes. "Zeus can cause 600 attack points of damage using his lightning bolts, but Athena has 3000 attack points and over 100 points of knowledge. She would see you coming and destroy any attack from the lightning bolts. Got it?"

Percy scrubbed his face and look back down, tucking the card he had been about to play into his pile again. "How do you remember all of this?"

"Nico taught me." I shrugged and kicked the grass. "I guess he was better at explaining it."

"Hold on." His eyes had narrowed. "Nico stopped playing this game years ago, Leila. When did you even have time to learn this?"

"Before you had us running after the Hunters, I helped Nico with some tricks for remembering Greek mythology. I kind of ended up adding rules to Mythomagic." I shrugged again. "Along with remembering the amount of points everyone had, he also had to the name the myth that went along with each character. So in the version Nico and I made up, Theseus would always beat the Minotaur because he had 6000 made-up mythology points."

Percy fell off his own metal perch, his eyes almost popping out of his skull. "You added an entirely new set of points to _every character_ in this game?"

My face heated slightly, but I took a deep breath and resisted the blush. I had kicked the blushing habit years ago. (Unfortunately it still happens around Will, but I gave up worrying about my reactions when it comes to _that _boy long before I started blushing.) "He was a cute kid. It was worth it," I said, shrugging off my embarrassment. "He's really good at Greek mythology now. He knows almost as much as Annabeth."

"Let's not get crazy," he told me. "Who played with him after we left?"

"Will, Travis and Conner, sometimes Beckendorf—pretty much whoever was willing to put up with Nico's constant talking. Now come on, play another card!" I whined.

Percy smirked then slapped his hand against the grass between us. "Hades. You played first so he has 5000 attack points," he recalled, stroking his cards in triumph. "I win."

I scowled and shoved the cards at him. "You distracted me."

"I was being resourceful," he corrected. "I'll take any advantage I can get."

"You just don't like this game because I can beat you!" I said, poking him in the ribs. "And I'm still winning."

He laughed. "Well, it's my turn, right?"

I nodded and waved for him to go. "Hurry up. I need to continue beating you."

Percy held up a red game piece. "Ares. Blood rage and infinite healing powers for three rounds."

"That's a good card. With his healing power, even if I won this round you'd get to keep him," I said.

In our defense, Percy and I had gone to our class the first day but then it turned out to be so awful, we decided skipping our Greek class once in a while would be in everyone's best interest.

And by "everyone's", we meant ours.

And by "once in a while," we meant everyday.

Eh, whatever. _Who cares anyway?_ I mused, chewing on my lip, debating between two cards.

"How did you convince Nico to stick around this year anyway?" Percy pretended to stretch and tried to sneak a peek of my cards. "He hates school more than Thalia."

I poked him in the forehead and sent him falling back. He landed back on the grass with a huff. "Easy. I told him we wanted him there."

He rolled his eyes. "Nico's not that sentimental. Come on, what did you _really_ tell him?"

"Fine. I told him we had food," I admitted. "We have good, home cooked food made fresh every day by our awesome mother, and he could be apart of this joy for only nine months of pure hell."

"Guess he has experience dealing with that, huh?"

I gasped, horrified. "Not funny, Percy! Bad joke."

"You're right. It was a bad joke," he agreed solemnly. "High school is so much worse!"

This time, I did laugh, but mostly because Percy leaped over, attempting to mock-attack me. I wasn't ticklish anymore either, except my brother always managed just to make me laugh during the most ridiculous times. It's probably the weird facial expressions he makes but that's still a theory. Sometimes, I just laugh at him and think it might be his face in general.

Since the war ended, most of our sparring consists of laughing, messing around, or trying to make the other person laugh so hard they have no choice but to give up the fight—and when my brother and I are in a good mood and we're really happy or excited about something, we have a problem with being a little… loud.

Anyways, I guess our laughing was just too loud or maybe this just happens because all of our teachers seem to be evil and scarred with major emotional issues that goes along really well with their hated for children because one thing led to another… and our formal teacher, Mr. Horace, was suddenly glaring down at us with a smug expression.

Percy's and my eyes widened simultaneously. We both froze and breathed different curses under our breath.

"Mr. Jackson, let go of your sister's hair. Ms. Jackson, stop tying your brother's shoelaces together," Mr. Horace ordered slowly like we were six instead of sixteen. "Come with me," he continued almost smiling and vibrating in happiness.

As usual, we were in trouble. On the way to the office, I discreetly passed a playing card to Percy. He glanced down in confusion then his eyes widened. "I win," I whispered, trying to lighten the mood. My brother rolled his eyes and ripped the card in half before tossing over his shoulder.

I smirked and kicked the paper bits of Kronos, Lord of Titans.

Long story short, I did all the talking and managed to slide us through with only a lecture from the principle and a teacher's escort to Greek class where we aced a pop quiz. (Greek is pretty easy class when you've been attacked by the creatures in questions one through ten—just saying.) Of course, Cara and Amy are in that class too, so they snagged the chance to corner and grill us about our plans for the weekend.

When Annabeth found out that Percy and I had skipped class, she flipped her Styx. She started telling us off, pulled out her knife, called us irresponsible morons, waved around her weapon and then—_I swear_—she growled at us. (An enraged Annabeth Chase might be one of the scariest things on the planet. Seriously, my fear for her is somewhere after Thalia during a thunderstorm but definitely before the Stoll brothers locked in a mall overnight.)

Now Annabeth and I are supposed to be learning about animals in Biology through a "hands-on project." More specifically, we're supposed to be _dissecting sea creatures _and identifying their _inside parts, _if you know what I mean. This also might be the single most traumatizing experience of my life.

Obviously my morning had just gotten better by the hour.

Have no fear. That was sarcasm.

I groaned. "Why didn't the teachers take care of this before class?" I whispered to Annabeth so our "project" didn't hear me. "Why are they making students murder innocence sea mammals?"

"Mr. Peterson already explained this three times," Annabeth reminded me gently. "The squids have to be… fresh or the experiment doesn't work as well and squids aren't mammals, Leila."

"That doesn't make me feel better," I mumbled, tapping the glass bowl with my fingers making the mini-sized squid zoom around faster. Our squid was surprising much quieter compared to others, but little sprouts of panic still popped up from the water like bubbles.

Annabeth visibly swallowed, watching the squid go around and around and around the bowl in terror. "Dang it, I think you're getting to me," she snapped, slapping her scalpel onto the table. "Now we'll never get this project done."

On my left, a girl shrieked as her lab partner sliced their squid in half without even blinking. Bile rose to the back of my throat as the little creature's screams slowly faded and eventually stopped when the girl's partner began removing organs. "I'm going to be sick," I blurted, covering my eyes with my hands.

"Okay," Annabeth started, passing me her water bottle. "I've seen you tear part and behead monsters, Leila. Pull yourself together. Athena's always got a plan."

I chugged some water and watched Annabeth go to the front of the class to catch Mr. Peterson's attention. While she talked, she made several quick gestures at me then at the other students. The teacher paled and nodded quickly, waving a hand toward the door.

Annabeth's shoulders slumped in relief and took a hall pass from the Mr. Peterson's desk. She rushed back to our table. "Come on. Get your things before he changes his mind," she muttered, grabbing her bag and the squid bowl. She practically ran from the classroom and I was right behind her.

Only a few students seemed to notice that we were leaving and of course, one of those students was Cara. Her eyes narrowed and her grip tightened on her own scalpel, but she didn't move from her seat. I winked at her as I passed her table.

Once the door had shut behind us, Annabeth rounded on me. "This is yours now," she told me, shoving the bowl of water at me.

"Wha-what?" I stuttered, juggling my backpack, Annabeth's water bottle, and the squid's bowl. A little bit of water spilled onto the floor but I couldn't tell if it was from the bottle or the bowl.

She laughed and pulled her water bottle out from under my arm. "We couldn't save them all, but this one is yours now because I'm definitely not taking care of it. Have fun bonding with your new pet."

I blinked and glanced down at the squid. "I don't think my apartment allows pets."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "That hasn't stopped you from having Mrs. O'Leary in there," she reminded me.

"What did you even say to Mr. Peterson?" I asked.

The daughter of Athena just smirked and started towards the doors. "Let's get some air," she suggested, ignoring my question. "You still look a little green."

"I do _not_!" I protested, swiping my sleeve across my forehead to remove any lingering sweat. Nausea always made me shaking and sweating. "You know the doors are locked. The office locks them everyday when the first bell rings."

Another laugh. Annabeth was a little scary when she was plotting something. She was obviously scheming because of the way she was chewing on her lip, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and not meeting my eyes or answering my questions. I let out a half-groan of pain, half-yip of excitement. "Annabeth—"

"Can't you get us out the building?" she interrupted with a challenging eyebrow lift.

I bristled. "Of course I can. Don't insult my abilities, Blondie, but you're not answering my questions."

"Is it making you nervous?"

I huffed and hopped forward a few steps to move in front of Annabeth. "_Yes_, it's making me nervous," I said honestly. "Is this some kind of payback for this morning?"

Annabeth crossed her arms. "_I_ wouldn't get into useless trouble," she stated.

"Come on," I hissed. She had completely ignored my Blondie comment. Now she was really worrying me. "It was one time. We didn't even get detention—"

"What if that had been a monster instead of a teacher?" she demanded, cutting me off again. "You two could have been seriously hurt, Leila. Neither of you were ready for an attack. If you had been ready, the teacher wouldn't have caught you."

I slung my bag over my shoulder. "It won't happen again," I said.

"You're lying," she snapped.

"Well, what else do you want me to say?"

"How about you're sorry for putting Percy in danger AGAIN?"

I snorted. "Are we really having this conversation AGAIN?" I mimicked.

"Obviously you need to be reminded AGAIN," she said angrily.

I bit my tongue. Sometimes I need to stop and remember that Annabeth and I were friends now. We get along and I liked that she and Percy were dating. As gently as manage, I gently told her, "He's my brother. We're going to mess around and _mess up_, but that's what we do. I have to remind myself every day that he's not that great prophecy kid anymore so we can afford to be a little reckless and have fun."

"You are both still demigods. You're Big Three children," she insisted quietly as we both glanced around for anyone listening. "It's dangerous to be—"

"Annabeth, I haven't hung out with my brother like this in years. Percy and I haven't been this carefree in a long time," I said slowly. "We're finally on the same page."

Annabeth took a deep breath. "I know you and Percy can take of yourselves, but when the two of you are together… there's this energy that attracts monsters and anything dangerous within a hundred miles. It makes me nervous to leave you to alone sometimes," she admitted.

"We've survived this long," I teased, trying to lighten the mood. "I didn't mean to start a fight. I really am glad things worked out between you and Percy. You're good for him. You keep him out of trouble."

She cracked a smile. "You should be more careful."

"That's why we keep you around, Blondie," I announced, spinning around. "Now it's time to fake a broken ankle."

"Don't call me Blondie," Annabeth said immediately. "Wait—_what?_" she cried.

_"Just kidding!"_

* * *

><p>"You're pretty good at that," Annabeth told me fifteen minutes later when we were enjoying our fresh donuts on the school steps.<p>

"At what? Faking injuries?" I asked, picking off some sprinkles and eating them one at a time.

"No. I meant lying," she said with a smirk.

"Hey, extreme low blood sugar is a real thing," I defended, taking another donut from the box. "I just don't have it."

She laughed and split her own glazed donut in half. "You looked pale enough."

"Whatever, Sassy," I stated, counting the sprinkles.

"You're one to talk." She kicked her feet out in front of her. "Besides, you have saved us from some very awkward explanations over the past few years."

"Thanks, I guess," I smirked, popping a few colored pieces of sugar into my mouth.

"Will you stop doing that?" Annabeth said, nodding toward my third donut. "Just eat one and stop un-decorating all of them."

"Fine." I replaced the donut I was holding with a crème filled one and finally took a full bite. "Happy?"

"Seriously?" she said, motioning toward the three donuts I had 'un-decorated.'

"What?" I said innocently, licking some crème and powdered sugar off my fingers.

"You're worse than Percy," she grumbled.

"I take pride in that. Speaking of Percy," I started, stealing a piece of her glazed donut, "how did he ask you to Homecoming? I never got the story."

"Oh, actually he didn't ask me at all," she said.

I blinked in shock. "What?"

"Well, I don't know," she muttered. "We're dating so I guess he assumes we're just going together."

A stoner with an obvious itch for the munchies took about two steps towards us, eyeing our pastries. "Has anyone else asked you?" I said, while sending a death glare over her shoulder towards the boy, daring him to take another two steps.

She shrugged and put the rest of donut back in the box. "Some guy in my math class asked me, but I told him I had a boyfriend."

"Nice excuse," I rolled my eyes as the pothead turned away, practically running back to his buddies by the chain-link fence. "Wait, is this the reason why you snapped at Cara in Biology?"

"Stop intimidating the locals," Annabeth told me when I continued glaring the group of druggies. "And I was surprised _you_ didn't snap at her."

"Eh, I was too nervous," I shrugged, turning away. "I was just kept thinking about the squids."

She laughed. "What are you even going to do with that?"

"I honestly have no clue," I ripped off a piece of fried dough and dropped it into the water for the squid. "Percy always wanted a gold fish. Maybe he'll take care of a squid instead."

"Uh, I don't think squids eat donut, Leila."

"They do now," I muttered, watching dough sink to the bottom of the bowl.

Annabeth sighed and rubbed her forehead like I was stressing her out. I wouldn't be surprised if I was, but that didn't make me feel any less guilty. Thankfully, she seemed to have bigger problems than a impulsive boyfriend and his sneaky sister. "Homecoming will be fine," I said. "She should know better than to cause a scene in front of so many people."

"No," she disagreed, "that means Homecoming is the perfect place for her to cause a scene because she knows we won't react to it."

"It gets better," I promised. "Guess what?"

"What?" she said cautiously.

I grinned. "The dev—I mean, the mortal also invited us to a party this weekend."

Annabeth's frown deepened, not even my slip-up with nicknames could make her smile now. "And why is this so exciting?"

"Because she said we could bring friends!" My smiled widened. "I think we should go and bring Will and the Stolls with us. We could cause some trouble; throw Cara off the scent or—even better—scare her away!"

She gnawed on her lip. "It's not the worst idea you've ever had, but your plan needs work."

I shrugged a shoulder. "That's why I was telling you. I was kind of hoping you could help me out with the details."

The daughter of Athena smirked. I could almost imagine her waving a little white flag in surrender. She knew I was trying to make things easier. "How many friends did she say we could bring?" she asked.

"Uh," I pushed my hair out of my face. "I don't remember. Just keep it under ten."

She opened up her notebook and jotted down a few notes. "Well, if we're going to go, we might as well go all out. We should make a list of who to invite when we get home. We've got work to do—but class first."

Right on time, the bell rang.

I hung my head in dramatic sadness. "Do you think if we just sit here we wouldn't ever have to go to class again like, _ever_?"

"I told Mr. Peterson we would go to the rest of our classes," Annabeth said. "If we just sat here not moving we wouldn't go to class, but teachers would come for us eventually."

"Or Thalia," I added ominously.

"Yeah, I've got History with her next. She'll kill both of us if you convince me to skip class." She closed the donut box. "You've got art with the devil?"

I nodded. "Ten drachmas say that she'll try to spill paint on me."

"Ten drachmas say she'll succeed," she said, standing up.

"Yikes," I stated, tucking my feet underneath me.

She rolled her eyes, but didn't convince to get up. She knew I'd go to class eventually. "See you after class, Van Gogh."

"Be there or be square, Jefferson!" I called after her.

Since Cara and Amy decided to skip art class, my day improved slightly. No one spilled paint on me so it all went pretty smooth. At lunch, I met up with Nico and shared donuts while I told him about getting caught playing Mythomagic under the bleachers. As soon as Thalia joined us, she rolled her eyes at my squid, grumbling about stupid Biology project and Poseidon kid's attachment issues. I was confused until I looked up and saw Percy coming across the cafeteria with Annabeth carrying his own squid aquarium.

On the way home from school, we picked up a real aquarium and some squid food. After sneaking it all upstairs, Percy and I fed both of the squids then began unpacking everything and reading instructions. While Percy and I were setting it up, Annabeth cleared off a place on the table and sat down with a notebook and pen. "Okay, the devil invited Percy and Leila to a party this weekend—and before anyone complain about not wanting to go," she said, jabbing her pen towards Thalia, Nico, and Percy, "Leila had a good idea."

"I want that statement on record. Annabeth Chase think _I_ have a good idea," I bragged, nudging Percy in the ribs.

"Well, it wasn't a horrible idea," she corrected, winking at her boyfriend. I rolled my eyes and pretended to gag when Percy kissed his girlfriend's cheek.

Annabeth laughed. "Anyways, we'll work the details later, but right now we need to decide who we're going to invite because Leila also got the all-clear for us to bring friends with us." She drew out two columns and labeled each side "Person" then "Reason." The first person she wrote down was Will and under reason, she wrote my name.

"Ha, ha," I mocked and pulled on one of Annabeth curls. She smirked and I tried to give her a dirty look but I failed and ended up grinning.

Next, she wrote down Travis then Conner for "pranks and other sneaky activities." Annabeth stopped and tapped her pen by #4. "Who else?"

Thalia took a seat at the table. "Clarisse," she said immediately.

Nico almost dropped the filter in shock. _CLARISSE?_ he mouthed in horror. I shrugged in response and went back to reading the instructions. "Clarisse?" Annabeth asked. "Why?"

Percy looked up from the squids and nodded in agreement. "If we ever want to scare the living daylights out of someone, I would volunteer Clarisse. And if the mortal—"

"I get your point," she said, writing down Clarisse and Chris in the next two spaces. Under reasons: "scare tactics" then "Clarisse leverage."

While Nico handed me filter parts, Annabeth chewed on the end of her pen and explained that we should try to get a child of Aphrodite to come since this would be their area of expertise. "I mean, I know we don't know any of them that well," she continued, "but this would be right up their alley, and they're all far more beautiful than the devil could ever hope to be, so that would be just rubbing it in her face even more."

Instantly, I thought of the head counselor. She was snippy and almost as snobby as the mortal. She would be perfect. "Drew," I stated unhappily. "I don't like her much—" Percy snorted. He knows my thoughts about Drew more than anyone. "—but I bet she'd help out," I added, shooting Percy a dark look. "She's like the demigod version of the mortal, anyway."

Annabeth nodded. "Good idea." She wrote down Drew's name. "And I think number seven should be Katie."

"Katie?" Nico echoed, giving me the last filter piece. "Why her?"

When I didn't understand Annabeth's thinking, I unusually turned to Thalia for an explanation. They've known each other longer so I knew that she would be able to read Annabeth better sometimes—but when I glanced at Thalia, she seemed just as confused as the rest of us.

Katie was a nice girl. I only knew her because Travis makes me talk to her when he gets tired of spying on her and stalking her around camp. It's a vicious cycle. He:

_1. Ditches Conner for an afternoon_

_2. Finds Katie_

_3. Tries to talk to her_

_4. Gets ignored/yelled at because of the infamous chocolate bunny incident_

_5. Interrupts what I'm doing to make me go talk to her_

_6. Finds me again then makes me to him everything she said and did_

_7. Throws a temper-tantrum because he doesn't have the guts to ask her out_

_8. Decides he going to get over her and meets up with Conner again to do some major pranking_

_9. Repeats from step one_

I call it the Nine Step Nightmare. Even though I love Travis, I wouldn't know bother being involved if Katie wasn't so nice. I mean, I almost feel bad for her. She's not oblivious to this cycle and she still always greets with a smile. Anyways, I've got a bit of a soft spot for that daughter of Demeter.

"She's about as "normal" as a demigod could get, and that could work to our advantage when it came to blending in," Annabeth told us. "If we were going to bring such a crazy assortment of people, this could all blow up in our faces; Katie was the best choice to keep things balanced."

I smiled. "I think it's a great idea. She's awesome. We should definitely invite her."

"Okay, that leaves two spaces," Thalia said. "Who are we missing?"

Percy mouth dropped open. "Rachel!" he announced. "I can't believe we didn't think of her!"

"Yes!" I said excitedly. "Let's invite Rachel. We have to invite her! Please?" I begged.

Annabeth clicked her pen. "Will she be allowed to?" Her eyes darted nervously from me to Percy. Annabeth and Rach had been getting along fine since the whole she-got-the-guy-and-Rachel-became-the-Oracle situation, but I knew it made her anxious to suggest that we leave her out.

"We'll call her and ask!" Nico said, jumping up from the floor. Just as he grabbed the phone, it started to ring. "Hello?" he answered slowly then he laughed and passed the phone to Annabeth. "It's Rachel. She wants to talk to you."

She smiled and took the receiver. "Rachel," she teased after a moment of listening, "is there really so little going on in the demigod world that this is what your visions have stooped to?"

Percy and Nico laughed and Thalia rolled her eyes. I jumped forward and leaned against the table on my elbows. "I want to talk her when you're done," I hissed at Annabeth.

She nodded once towards me and leaned the phone between her shoulder and head. "You WHA—wait. Your visions even told you her NAME?" she replied to Rachel in surprise. Whatever was said next made Annabeth laughed even more, and write down Rachel's name. Even though I was irritated I hadn't talked to Rach yet, I grinned. I was happy the two of them were finally getting so well. Honestly, it helped me warm up to Annabeth faster.

Finally, the daughter of Athena held out the receiver. I practically ripped it from her hand. "Hey, Rach," I greeted, standing up from the floor and running back to my room.

"Hey, Lays," she responded as the door slammed behind me. "I can't believe you're finally doing something normal."

Thalia was my first friend who was a girl. Since I had a twin brother, I usually got along better with boys. (Example: Will, Travis, and Conner.) After hearing so much about her, I was surprised we had gotten along so easily—especially since Annabeth and I didn't get along—but Thalia was just awesome like that. She made it work. Although, since Thalia was so close with Annabeth, I couldn't exactly cuddle up on my sofa and eat ice cream while dishing about boys and that "know it all daughter of Athena."

Rach and I became fast friends for a lot of reasons, but it helped that she didn't mind my big mouth/didn't care about what people thought even though she wasn't very outspoken/wasn't Annabeth biggest fan/got along with my brother without flirting (too much). I didn't talk to her as much as I wanted because of the strict rules at her school and also the way technology reacts around me, but we always took advantage of the time we had.

"I know. I don't know whether to be nervous or excited. This will be my first teenage party," I admitted, jumping onto my bed. "Have you ever been to party?"

"Nah, I'm usually too busy being dragged into hiding because my friends are being attacked by monsters," she said casually.

"Ha!" I barked. "Very funny. I hope you're alone in you're room!"

"Of course I am," she replied. "And I actually meant Homecoming not the party."

I kicked off my sneakers. "Oh, my goodness!"

"_And_ you're going without Will?" she continued. "You, my friend, are one brave soul! Are you excited at all?"

I groaned while she laughed at my answer. "I can't believe I'm doing this. I tried on my dress this morning—I seriously feel like an idiot."

"What dress your dress look like? _Describe everything_," Rach demanded.

"If you know I'm going to homecoming then you've already seen my dress," I pointed out, chewing on my lip.

"That's different. You just get a certain… _feeling_ in the dress. Besides, I only saw the top part. I almost didn't recognize you in pink! Ugh, I wish I was there," she confessed. "You have to send me a picture—or save it and show me this weekend!"

"So are you coming to the party?" I asked, discreetly changing the subject. "Are we going to have to sneak you out of school?"

"I don't even care if I'm caught running away from the school!" she said. "You guys are finally doing normal things! I'm _definitely_ in."

"Good, you can help me control Annabeth," I joked. "I think she's going to murder the mortal."

"Keep an eye on her tonight," she advised.

"Who? Annabeth or Cara?" I curled up with my pillow.

She laughed. "Both! Cara's an absolute terror and Annabeth might loose it if she hits on your brother while he's wearing a suit."

"Ew," I wrinkled my nose. "Please tell me you're not admiring the way my brother looks in a suit from some—"

"No way!" she cried. "But oh gods, there's this guy in my Government class that is totally gorgeous. I can't even believe he's real. And he was totally checking out my art today. It was so cute!"

"I'm sure your art wasn't the only thing he was checking out," I told her, making the two of us giggle like ridiculous schoolgirls.

_Sworn off boys_—yeah, right. Rach was a bit of a flirt, which actually might be a good thing since she not supposed to fall in love and stay with one guy. She's the Oracle. Boys and other things that might… Well, de-virginize her are a complete no-no. I probably shouldn't be supporting any of it, but once she had described the boy from Government some more—I wasn't surprised she fell under his charm. "Okay, he's a con artist," I decided. "No guy from this century is that sweet and perfect."

She snorted. "Not even Will?"

"Hey, there's a reason I'm dating Will and not some boy who's that perfect," I defended.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes," I insisted. "First of all, there has to be something wrong with your Government boy—"

"David," Rach prompted.

"David," I repeated. "There has to be something wrong with him because I'm serious. He's too perfect. Second, I'm dating Will because he's not perfect. I need someone to tell me off once in while. I'd step all over your nice boy David."

"You would crush him," she laughed. "But hey, it's getting late. You should go get ready."

I rubbed my eyes. "Don't remind me. I actually managed to forget about it."

"Just bring your knife and you'll be fine. We'll talk more this weekend. You still have to tell me how your date with Will went."

"You've been talking to Percy, haven't you?" I accused. "There is no way you saw that many visions of me this week!"

"I admit nothing!" She laughed again. "Say hi to your brother for me, m'kay?"

"M'kay," I agreed, not bothering to accuse her again. She wouldn't tell me anything anyway. Rachel and Percy were still good friends. They loved keeping silly secrets from me. Apparently, it made them feel like they were part the Greek mob.

"Bye, Lays," she said. "Don't kill anyone tonight."

"I won't," I sighed. "Bye, Rach." I waited another second then finally hung up.

The party would probably be a disaster. I was going to have to put up with Cara flirting with Percy, Travis flirting with Katie, Drew flirting with everyone—but I was surprised that I was actually excited. I was going to hang out with Rach this weekend and sneak around with Travis and Conner while hopefully being with Will every second.

Hey, don't judge me. I'm still a girl.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: Reasons for not updating at a normal rate:**

**The Office distracted me.**

**I was applying to colleges.**

**I got sick. Twice—stomach flu then strep throat. So fun.**

**I was involved in some very serious snowball fights that demanded very serious attention.**

**I am a child with zero discipline.**

**Anyways, in case you didn't know, extreme low blood sugar is a real thing. My friend used to leave class all the time when she got dizzy or light headed to go eat something sugary and awesome. Tons of fun, actually. Also, I have obviously never played Mythomagic. I only wanted to use it as an example so no one murder me if I violated the actual rules of the game. You know you're all awesome and I love every single one of you. HAPPY HANUKKAH and MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hope you guys have an awesome new year!)**

* * *

><p><strong>Answering last chapter's question: <strong>Guys, Cara can see through the Mist, just like Rachel. If she uncapped Riptide, she would see the sword. I was very tempted to have her uncap the pen… but that would ruin later fun, wouldn't it? ;)

**This chapter's question—possibly the greatest debate of my hometown/surrounding area:  
><strong>Are the sugary decorations on desserts and other wonderful items called SPRINKLES or JIMMIES?

Facebook page where you can read future updates/plans and deleted scenes: _Completely Shore_


	10. Phase 9

**Disclaimer: I still do not own Percy Jackson. Annnnnd now I'm sad.**

* * *

><p>Phase Nine<p>

Getting ready for homecoming was a bit surreal. I hadn't worn a dress or done anything special with my hair since my unofficial first date with Will—and _that_ was almost two years ago.

By the time I was done on the phone and had come back into the living room, Percy and Nico were chilling eating pieces of fruit on the couch admiring their fabulously finished aquarium. The two of them were just sitting there, watching the squids go around and around. The TV wasn't even on.

"Squids are happy," Nico stated, motioning towards the happy sea not-mammals (according to Annabeth anyway).

"Cool," I replied, dropping down next to Percy. "Where'd the girls go?"

"They went to go curl Thalia's hair," my brother said as he passed me a piece of pineapple. "Nethier of them were sure what to do so Mom is explaining the process to them and teaching them to wield the dangerous weapon known as a curling iron."

"Wand," Nico corrected.

Percy blinked, cantaloupe halfway to his mouth. "What?"

Nico's cheeks turned pink. "Your mom brought home a curling _wand_. Apparently a it works better or something, I don't know," he explained his cheeks turning from blush-pink to beet-red.

"Oh, okay," Percy shrugged and finishing chewing. "Whatever it is, it looked dangerous. By the way, we're supposed to be sending you to join them."

I stretched my fingers and resisted the urge to crack my knuckles. Since I mostly did hand-to-hand fighting, I couldn't afford to get arthritis now or any time later in life. "Why? I'm not curling my hair."

"I don't know," Percy told me, swatting my hands away. He loved reminding me not to crack my knuckles. It usually gave him the chance to start some kind of fight with me. I ignored him this time. "But Nico and I are under very strict instruction," he continued as I grabbed more fruit. "We're supposed to—"

"Leila Jackson, I can hear you!" Thalia shouted from down the hall. "Get your butt off the couch and come help me survive this! Let's go!"

"_I don' wanna_!" I called back, my mouth full of pineapple.

"Such a lady," Percy commented while I finished chewing.

I snorted. "I don't need your approval, brother darling."

"LET'S GO, JACKSON!" Thalia repeated. "I will use _force_!"

I groaned and dragged myself off the sofa. "What could possibility be more important than my sofa time? Homecoming isn't worth this stress. If we stress than the dev—the mortal," I corrected quickly, pushing open the girl's bedroom door, "—wins a small victory over our emotions or something."

"Amen," the Hunter muttered from her seat on the bed.

My mom winked at me over Thalia's head. I grinned back. "Hey, Mom."

"Hi, sweetie," she replied, perfecting Thalia's curls with her long, hot iron. "Could you start pulling some of your hair out of your face? I'm going to curl the ends."

I nodded and joined Annabeth in front of the mirror. She was busy tucking her hair into an elaborate bun with fancy pieces hanging in the front. I had a feeling she would've been the one instructing and shouting at me to become involved, but she was concentrating extremely hard on her hair. I decided it was probably best to just let Annabeth do her thing so I grabbed my own hair tie and bobby pins.

"All done, sweetheart," my mom told Thalia, patting her shoulder. "Annabeth, let me help you. Did you want me to curl the pieces in the front?"

Annabeth sighed. "Yes, _please_—my hair is starting to look like a nightmare."

"Oh, honey. No, it isn't," she disagreed. "It looks great." Annabeth replaced Thalia on the bed.

"What do you think?" Thalia asked, shaking out her freshly curled hair. "How do I look?"

"Better than a poodle," I teased.

"Hilarious," she commented as I pushed the last bit of hair out of eyes.

"You're not trying to attract boys anyway!" I said, laughing.

"Leila, here," Annabeth said, cutting off our conversation. "This is for you." She gave me a small makeup compact while my mom started curling the front of her hair.

I blinked. "You want me to apply my own makeup?" I'm awful with makeup. That's why I never wear it. I'm a complete disaster with that face paint and everyone knows it.

"It's cover up," Annabeth stated as if this explained everything. "_For your scars,_" she continued when she saw my blank stare.

I scowled in understanding and grabbed the makeup. I stripped my sweat pants and quickly started covering the scars on my legs from all the countless monsters attacks.

"I'm wearing a short dress so I need to shave my legs," Thalia announced. "Either of you need to?" Annabeth shook her head absentmindedly examining my mom's handiwork in a hand mirror.

"Eh, I'm all right," I replied, adding a more cover-up on a practically bad scar. "I'm wearing a long dress but I do need to rinse off. I'm gross and sweaty from school."

"Don't you get your hair wet and don't you dare wash off the cover up!" Annabeth called as Thalia and I made our exit.

"I won't!" I promised, turning on the water.

* * *

><p>You could tell Annabeth planned my outfit.<p>

The dress was tight and formfitting at the top, but flowed out at the bottom. I could still move perfectly. It was also made slightly above floor-length so I wouldn't trip over it if we ended up fighting monsters, which was a very likely possibility. The color was pretty, too—a very dark pink or maroon or something. In the right lighting, it was almost purple. There was only one think shoulder strap to keep the top sturdy, which worried me until I realized that just having one strap gave me a lot bigger arm range for fighting. My shiver heels were very tall and sharp, but also sturdy. They matched my bracelet perfectly and honestly, were exactly what I would have chosen for myself.

I could walk, run, jump—heck, I probably could've fought a war in this dress and at the end, the dress would've looked better than my currently perfectly curled hair.

Everything was perfect… and it made me want to die.

Something about dresses just made me completely beyond uncomfortable. It was literally way, far out of my Happy Place and Comfort Zone. I could wear ratty jeans and T-shirts, battle armor, boy's clothes, homeless-person attire, but a _dress_? Nope. Nopenopenope.

The sight of a dress made my palms slippery and stomach clench in knots. I kicked my mirror in frustration and thankfully, neither the glass nor my shoes broke.

"Want me to call Will?" I glanced up and saw Percy leaning against the doorframe. He had one hand over his mouth, covering his expression, but I could tell by his eyes that he was smirking—laughing at me, no doubt.

"I'm not freaking out that badly," I answered, rolling my eyes.

"But you _are_ freaking out," Percy stated.

I took a deep breath and smoothed the top of my dress. "Don't tell Annabeth, okay?"

Percy moved his hand away. He didn't bother hiding his smirk anymore. "I wouldn't dare," he told me. "She needs you and Thalia tonight. You need to make sure I have a girlfriend by tomorrow morning."

I managed a laugh. "No promises about that," I joked. "I'll go and I'll help take care of Annabeth. You know I've always got your back Percy, it's just…"

My brother snapped the door shut. "You hate the dress," he finished.

"I don't hate the actual dress." I went over to my desk and yanked open a few different drawers. "I just hate wearing it," I corrected, grabbing a couple throwing stars out of one the drawers.

"Fine. Wear jeans or pick out your own dress next time." I stuck my tongue out at him. "Are you serious bringing those?" he asked, motioning towards the weapons.

I strapped the stars to my upper thigh. "I'm not planning to lose my knife but if _someone_ gets ahold of it, I'll need a backup plan."

He nodded. "Bring the darts, not the stars. It's less messy and can also be used on mortals."

I laughed but kept the stars anyway. "Are you seriously that nervous about tonight? The dress is the worst part for me. What's got you worried?"

"I've just got a feeling about tonight. I think Cara might try something since she knows we won't start something in public…" he shrugged. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. I just want to go and spend time with Annabeth and dance with my amazing girlfriend."

"And awesome sister," I finished. He laughed but nodded in agreement.

I smiled and wrapped up my darts then tucked them into a pocket on the inside of my dress. "Got enough weapons yet?" Percy said sarcastically.

I snapped my knife onto my bracelet, finishing my weapons montage. "I'm ready."

* * *

><p>Our cafeteria had been transformed—even if none of it was very magical.<p>

The light had been dimmed and a table of cheap food and drink had been put out in one of the corners. Plastic tablecloths and tiny candles covered the few cafeteria tables that were set up by the snacks. The staff had hung up bright streamers and balloons and put a dance floor over the fake linoleum floor so we students didn't scuff anything up too bad. Our fellow students were either awkwardly slow dancing together (probably attempting to be romantic) or inappropriately grinding comfortably against each other (making the rest of us watching extremely _un_comfortable).

Overall, Homecoming was pretty pathetic. I was glad I hadn't wasted any time at school dances over the years.

Scanning for monsters at homecoming was easier than I thought. We all split up to find any that might have sensed all of us (let's face it, we were a pretty big group of demigods) but other than breaking up a mosh pit that was being encouraged by some dracaena, the dance was relatively monster-free. Our search for monsters ended before it really started. Thalia, Annabeth, and I moved onto searching for the Percy and Nico instead.

"There," Annabeth stated while fixing her dress.

"With the food," Thalia finished, jabbing her thumb in their direction.

"Boys," I laughed, rolling my eyes. Thalia nodded seriously than laughed with Annabeth and I.

Unfortunately, the happy moment was short-lived. My skin crawled when I spotted the Mortal and her cronies making their way over to the boys. "Where?" Annabeth said immediately, recognizing my Mortal-loathing groan.

"Guess the dance isn't completely monster-free," I muttered as angrily gestured towards them.

"Too bad we can't get rid of them, too," Thalia agreed.

The daughter of Athena spotted them and nodded once—as if confirming some sort of plan. Instantly, she changed her course and headed straight for the girls. "This outta be good," Thalia muttered to me, speeding up to stay with Annabeth.

I grinned as we stepped up right in front of the mortals just in time to cut off their path and make them all take a step back. Simultaneously, the girl's mouths dropped open in surprise and as their shock wore off, they began sizing us up—I unconsciously straightened and started scanning them for any threat.

Cara and Amy both had too-tight dress that dragged on the floor even with their skyscraper-worthy heels. Just like her friends, Sophie had picked extremely high heels—however, she chose to wear a short dress. Unlike Thalia, her dress was if-I-bent-over-you-could-see-my-underwear-short. The whole thing was very delicate and seemed ready to fall apart at any second. Dancing would be a nightmare for her, but this airhead was obviously going for the sexy, yet innocence look. They're makeup was heavy and their perfume hovered between us like a disgusting fog. It was obvious none of them were ready for the fight they were asking for.

Although… other than being unready to fight, the three of them looked good. Better than they usually did, anyway.

Annabeth and Cara were staring at each other in a way that made me want to duck for cover. Thalia narrowed her eyes and sensing the impending fight, she tapped her foot sharply on the ground, getting everyone's attention. "Where do you think you're going?"

Amy jumped when Thalia's foot hit the ground. "Whoa," she breathed, not quite shutting her mouth all the way.

"You guys look…" I snorted quietly as Sophie became too stunned to continue and her sentence trailed off.

This was slightly flattering but I mean, _sheesh_. It was only a little makeup and glamour. Although, since the three of us had worked hard to look good, I was willing to accept a little bit of appreciation tonight.

At this point, Cara was too distracted by Annabeth to notice that I was blatantly mocking them. I openly smirked while Cara faced off with Annabeth and Sophie avoided eye contact with us—but Amy narrowed her eyes at my expression. Her mouth turned into a thin line of disapproval, but she didn't say anything. I knew she wouldn't do anything that might interfere with Cara's master plan to get Percy.

"Good," Cara said, finishing Sophie's sentence. She said the word like it tasted bad in her mouth. I wouldn't have been surprised if it did. Her ugly scowl was enough to tell me how she felt about us looking 'good'. "And we were just going to say hi," she told Annabeth, finally answering her question.

Her gaze darted behind us for a moment and I knew she was checking on the boy's whereabouts, making sure they hadn't moved yet. My smirk turned to scowl in a flash. "Uh-huh," I muttered. "Sure."

"Yeah, I am actually surprised you came," Cara snapped, rounding on me. Her eyes were blazing with jealously and frankly, a touch of crazy. This girl was obviously not accustomed to any sort of competition.

I stiffened and took a deep, calming breath to avoid tackling her. "Oh, really?" I asked slowly. "And why is that?"

"Because Will couldn't come," she stated simply.

My eyes went almost as narrow as Cara's bimbo of a friend. This past week, Annabeth and I had attempted to get Will a pass to Homecoming but a lady in the office told us it was too late. I vaguely remembered Annabeth telling me that Amy worked in the office… if any of them had something to do with Will not coming to dance, there was going to be a real fight.

Annabeth leaned forward and reached for her dagger, but I wound my arm through hers to stop the action. If this mortal was going to be attacked while disrespecting my boyfriend, I was going to the one holding the knife, not Annabeth. "Yeah, I wasn't going to come at first," I admitted, giving her a tight-lipped smile, "but after Thalia and Annabeth grabbed me to look at dresses…" _I decided I wasn't going to leave them stranded alone with you._ "Well, I talked to him and he told me to go and make sure I got lots of pictures."

That part wasn't a lie. After I got off the phone with Rachel, I called Will and told him about the party and Homecoming. He immediately agreed to come to the party ("You're are_ NOT_ going to a teenage party without me.") and grumbled a bit about Homecoming ("Make sure those idiotic boys keep their hands to themselves!"), but eventually told me to make the most of it. ("But for my own peace of mind, only dance with boys that share your DNA, Leila.")

Cara made a sound of acknowledgement, but her satisfied expression toward me exactly what I wanted to know. She had stopped Will from coming to the dance. Now she would pay for it.

It was only a matter of time.

I released Annabeth's arm while Thalia dismissed them and subtlety turned us away—but not before Cara managed to hiss out another vague threat. She would be coming for us later. I guess we just had to be ready.

* * *

><p>I could count on one hand how many times I've seen Annabeth freak out. She doesn't necessary lose her mind like most people. Everything she does has careful planning behind it so when something unexpected rocks her ships and throws her plan out of balance… Well, that's enough to make her snap. It's an art. You have to know exactly when to back off and exactly when to strike. I would know because I've had years of practicing how to irritate her…<p>

…So it really pissed me off when someone else was better at it than I was and darn it, Cara was fighting for first place.

See, about halfway through the dance, Annabeth stopped twitching every time someone other than Percy spoke to her—she just went in for the kill. Literally.

A girl named Mina from my and Percy's Greek class had the guts to walk over and say hi but when she approached, a rather crazy looking daughter of Athena spun around with her knife drawn.

The poor mortal girl jumped about three feet in the air and while Percy laughed and soothed his girlfriend, I quickly made up an excuse for Annabeth's seemingly psychotic behavior. And after all that, Mina was still brave enough to ask if she could borrow our notes since we appeared to be doing well in the class.

"Oh, I'm sorry. We usually just study right from the book and rely on instinct," I explained with a laugh. Mina nodded disappointedly and twirled the end of her truffle-looking dress, but still managed to laugh a bit.

Annabeth—completely disregarding her fancy makeup and hairstyle—raked a hand through her hair and over her face. "I'm sick of this!" she wailed. Percy and Nico both recoiled away and Thalia immediately started looking around to make sure no one was listening.

"If you ever need help though, Annabeth's a great tutor," I went on, ignoring my friend's. Mina's eyes widened with fear like I was going to force her to take lessons from the crazy blonde.

"I'm sick of her!" Annabeth hissed, as Mina's gaze darted between the two of us. "I'm sick of – of – of her snooping, and her questions and her surprise, and her condescension, and—"

"On normal days, she's great," I amended to Mina as Annabeth continued to complain about Cara to the others.

"Did I offend her?" Mina whispered to me, subtly pointing to Annabeth.

"No, of course not," I assured her. "She's not talking about you, I swear."

She let out a shaky breath that might have been an attempt at a laugh. "Bad timing?" she guessed.

I nodded and smiled a little. "I better help. I'll see you in class, Mina."

"Alright, tell Annabeth I hope she feels better, I guess," she replied. "Have fun, Leila!"

"—what if she figures out the truth, just because she's following us every single gods-cursed day, and then the monsters come after her, and we'll have to try to _protect her!" _Annabeth panicked. "I don't think I can do that—I don't—I—I—"

I gave Mina another smile and once she was out of earshot, I grabbed Annabeth's arm and spun her around. Percy and Nico were both visibly cringing by now and Thalia's expression was torn between sad and scared. Her arms were out in front of her like she was trying to help but something was holding her back.

As soon as I had Annabeth's attention, I knew why the rest of the gang looked so lost. The angry tears that had been brimming in her eyes were now spilling over and streaking down her face. She wiped a hand down her face—and just seemed to notice that she was crying. Her expression quickly went from upset to horrified when she noticed the tears.

An unfamiliar urge suddenly appeared. I wasn't completely comfortable with it yet, but it wasn't a horrible feeling either. People assume that I started protecting and caring about Annabeth when I realized Percy wasn't going to give her up. Unfortunately, she seemed to have wormed her way into my good graces without Percy's help.

Cara was suddenly in danger for a whole different reason. No one made Annabeth Chase cry. I would punch _Percy's _lights out for that so I don't even want to go into detail about what I was suddenly willing to do to Cara for making Annabeth cry. "Let's go have a talk, you and me," I said, turning her away.

"Wait—!" Percy's eyes widened like he suddenly realized I was taking Annabeth away from him. His jaw clenched and he moved towards his girl but I wrapped a protective arm around her.

"No," I said firmly, making Percy hesitate. "Not this time. Give us a minute." Before he could protest again, I led Annabeth to the one place he wouldn't follow: the girl's washroom.

"But seriously," Annabeth breathing hitched again as she tried to stop the tears and calm down. "What if she _does_ figure us out?"

I slammed the bathroom. "How much _do_ you think she knows?" I asked. _Thalia would stall Percy,_ I reasoned. That would buy us some time but only for a moment. Nothing could him away from Annabeth for very long—not even the lieutenant of the hunters of Artemis.

"I don't know! She was in _your _room!" Annabeth said in panic, as I scanned the room. I eyed a pair of barefeet under one of the stalls suspiciously. We would have to be careful about what we said.

The daughter of Athena leaned far over one of the sinks and for a second, I was afraid she was going to be sick. I grabbed a paper towel and ran it under cold water. "Yeah, but Percy and I were both there. No worries, 'kay?" I responded, carefully holding her hair out of her face.

I lightly swiped the wet paper towel across the back of her neck and face. I wasn't too concerned about her makeup anymore. The rush of stress and angry-induced tears had smeared it too much already. She would have to redo it all. _Thalia has extra makeup_, I thought.

She sucked in small breaths. "It's not fair. Why can't she leave us alone?"

I threw away the now-dirty paper towel. "And by 'us,' you mean Percy?" I joked. I couldn't help but tease her. She was overacting a little bit but also needed someone to blame. I'd take her wrath if it meant she'd stop crying and forget about Cara for a while.

Her irritation toward my attitude only showed for a second then she seemed to become resigned. "Yes, I can't pretend that hasn't been bothering me a little…"

I snorted. "A little?" I said incredulously. There were a lot of annoying things about Cara and I think her manipulation was the worst. I wanted to strangle and gut her for preventing Will from coming to the dance but I would have to suck it up right now—although before I could stop it, my spark of frustration caused the sink in front of Annabeth to turn-on full blast.

Annabeth jumped back so she wouldn't get wet. "Okay, a lot," she admitted with a rueful look, pushing down the sink handle to try and stop the water but it wouldn't budge.

I snickered. Annabeth was obviously extremely annoyed by Cara. She was kidding herself if she thought no one had noticed. I mean, she had even outright confessed her irritation to Thalia and I but I never believed one girl would be able irritate her to the point of tears. Maybe Cara really was a special brand of infuriating.

"That's stupid," I decided, letting the water turn off then back on again.

"It's _not_." Annabeth's grip on the sink tightened as she gave one final shove against the handle. It still didn't move. "And will you stop it?" she demanded, gesturing to the water.

I took a deep breath and let the water slowly tickle to a stop. "Sorry," I said briskly. "But it's still stupid."

"It is not! She's _annoying_," Annabeth repeated hotly as if she wanted to use a stronger word, "and I have enough faith in Percy to know that he's not going to dump me for her, but—"

"Annabeth!" I interrupted, throwing my hands into the air. "Percy loves you! He doesn't want some random snob's—who can't take the hint he's not interested," I added, jabbing her in the shoulder to empathize my point, "—attention. He wants yours. Don't let this get to you—he _loves_ you!"

The girl in the stall banged into the wall and whelped as she dropped her purse on her own feet.

Annabeth mostly ignored the girl, only lowering her tone. "Our hints were a little—" she said more calmly.

"Obvious?" I finished when she stopped to think of a word. She nodded once in acknowledgement so I continued. "I thought so, too. Even a Seaweed Brain like Percy caught on."

"I guess I am being a bit silly," she admitted reluctantly.

"If you stay here, then you let the slut win." Annabeth turned away and met my gaze in the mirror. She knew I didn't use the word 'slut' very often. I was usually a very non-judgmental person (you never know what someone else is going through and all that), but Cara was about as deep as a kiddie pool. Only people more shallow than her would believe that she was deep. "Are you really going to let all your hard work go to waste?"

Annabeth smirked. "You're the one who kicked her into the grass."

My mouth dropped open. It was_ her _idea to put her in the grass! Of course since I was the one to execute her plan, I was the one who was going to take the blame—but she wasn't innocent either. "You dumped water on her!" I reminded her.

Half of Annabeth's mouth lifted into an almost-smile. "And I didn't say I was giving up."

_Progress,_ I thought, grinning back at her. "You better not! Come on Annabeth, don't you dare give me that. I don't think I've ever seen him happier than when he is with you. There is no competition." I had spent so many years being jealous of the close friendship between Percy and Annabeth, even though I had made my own close friends with Will and the Stolls. Maybe it was because I always knew that the two of them would start dating… or maybe it had nothing to do with Percy and I had always just been jealous of Annabeth's awesomeness. "Besides," I added as Annabeth finally fully smiled, "I'd probably murder him if he left you for _that!_"

Annabeth and I laughed just as Thalia came through the door. "You guys all right?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"We're fine," I told her. "We'll be out in a sec."

"Well, someone better go out and calm Percy down because he is literally five seconds away from barging into the girls' bathroom to see if Annabeth is okay." Thalia leaned back against the door and crossed her arms, casually holding the door closed. _Like that would stop him._

I rolled my eyes at Thalia and Annabeth began panicking about her smeared makeup. "I'll go," I volunteered. "Thalia, will you help Annabeth fix her makeup?"

"I'd love to." The daughter of Zeus cracked open her clutch and pulled out makeup remover, obviously ready to work.

I squeezed Annabeth's shoulder and headed for the door. "Work fast," I muttered to Thalia under my breath as I walked out.

"Good luck," she replied.

I pushed open the bathroom door and almost whacked right into Percy. I started. "Whoa—"

"What's wrong with Annabeth?" he demanded about two inches from my face. Nico was lingering a little ways behind him but as soon as he saw me, his hands flew up in the air like he was initiating a surrender.

I huffed and shoved Percy away from the doorway so I wasn't blocking the girl's room entrance. "Take a step back and calm down. Your girl's fine, bro. She just needs to cool off a bit. Give her some space."

My brother's face scrunched up. His arms were still out in front of him like he was torn between needing a hug of comfort and pushing past me to get to his girlfriend. Nico chewed on his lip while his eyes darted around like he was subtly looking for a place to hide in case we really started arguing.

I sighed and tried to diffuse the situation a bit. I needed to distract Percy long enough to make sure Annabeth had time to fix her makeup and have a moment of peace. "Thalia's helping Annabeth. She'll be another two minutes," I promised, leading him away from the bathrooms. "Just enough time for a dance."

He cracked a smile. "Come on," I coaxed, wiggling back and forth on the balls of my feet. "Let's dance!"

"The two of you dancing is more dangerous than the two of you fighting," Nico stated, backing away even more. "I'm going to go look for a place to hide."

Percy finally laughed and offered out his hand with a flourish. "May I?" he asked in a stiff, formal voice.

I snickered. "Of course, good sir," I replied, curtseying as Percy bowed. I took his hand and we headed for the dance floor. Once we had elbowed our way to the middle, we started spinning in time with the extremely slow song that was being blasted through the speakers.

"This song is boring," Percy stated.

"Seriously," I agreed. "This sounds like funeral music."

My brother raised an eyebrow. "Want to mix it up?"

"Thought you'd never ask," I teased.

Percy immediately spun me out and when I spun in, I grabbed his other hand instead of his shoulder. He grinned and we did a one of those two person, inside out turns. We were now dancing way too fast for the music, but that was half the fun. Percy dropped one of my hands and quickly spun me three times. I laughed and swayed in my high heels but my brother caught me and dipped me back then up again before I could even blink. I couldn't stop laughing and apparently, neither could Percy. We were cracking up right there in the middle of Goode High School Homecoming. I put my arm over his shoulder and we started kicking in unison like a pair of crazy Russian dancers.

People had smartly started backing away from us and as the crowd cleared, we managed to see Annabeth, Thalia, and Nico laughing against the back wall by the bathrooms. Percy dropped his arm and snuck out from under mine, running to Annabeth and leaving me on the dance floor.

"Hey!" I protested. Our dance hadn't lasted long but that was fine. Right now, Annabeth needed him almost as much as he needed her. Besides, I still couldn't stop laughing.

As soon as Percy reached his girlfriend, he hugged Annabeth tightly and soon the two of them headed back towards me, already beginning to sway back and forth. Percy blinked and met my gaze over Annabeth's head like he suddenly remembered I existed. I snickered and winked at him. He relaxed and gracefully spun Annabeth around in one perfect circle, completely different from the way he had spun me about thirty seconds earlier.

As the rest of the gang started reminiscing about old times, I scanned the room hoping Cara would be smart for once and stay away. _Far, far away_.

I still couldn't find her or her friends in the crowd when Thalia said, "We all know there's something wrong with Percy. There's no reason to fight over it."

Just before Percy broke away from dancing with Annabeth to argue with Thalia about arguments, his girlfriend turned his face back. "Shut up and kiss me, Seaweed Brain," she told him. Percy laughed and I let the two of them have their moment, successfully managing not to throw out as Percy and Annabeth started exchanging saliva _again._

But I wasn't fond of seeing any couple make-out on a public dance floor so I shuddered and loudly blurted. "You two are boring!" They broke away and Percy glared at me. I winked again and grabbed Nico before either Percy or Annabeth could take revenge. "Come on, Death Breath. You're dancing with me."

Nico's eyes widened in panic as I put one of his arms on my waist and grabbed the other with my hand. "But I—I—!" he protested.

"If you struggle, I will hurt you," I said mildly. He squeaked and shuffled slightly away from me. We only danced uninterrupted for a minute and Nico was careful to avoid my feet. I laughed but when I spun around, I almost screamed.

Cara was standing there, shoes in hand, and tapping her foot like she had been waiting for me to stop dancing for years.

As soon as Nico and I broke away from each other, the mortal slapped a piece of paper into my palm. "The address for the party," she told me before I could ask. "It starts around eight, but it's best to be there at eight-thirty so the party in full-sling by the time you arrive."

I blocked Percy and Annabeth from view as she tried to step around me. "I want to say goodbye," she explained in a stiff voice.

"We'll see you tomorrow," Nico said, stepping up next to me.

We both crossed our arms in freaky unison and stared down at the Mortal. I was really tall for my age, a little under six-foot (thanks, Dad) _and_ I was in high heels whereas Cara had chosen to ditch them so I towered over her easily. I also had Nico glaring at her from my side, which always managed to cause people to shiver and frankly, want to cry.

"Go home," I said. I was being nice to her after what she did to Will but I wasn't about to start a fight right after Annabeth just had some sort of anxiety attack.

After a few more seconds, the Mortal spun on her heel—although, she spun so fast she almost took off Nico's head with the shoes she was carrying. Her feet slapped against the floor as she ran through the crowd and pushed her way to the door.

As she disappeared from view, horror suddenly gripped me. She wasn't wearing shoes. She was barefoot. Oh, gods… _The girl in the bathroom stall_.

I quickly went through our conversation—I'll admit, Annabeth and I sounded pretty shady but we didn't say anything damning. I swallowed. She didn't know we knew that she was the girl in the bathroom, though, thanks gods. But our file, our house, that shady conversation—how much was going to be too much? I just hoped she would run away in fear before she found out the truth.

"Well that's a relief," Nico muttered. "I was afraid I was going to be breaking-up a cat fight between you two."

"It's coming," I warned, taking his hand again. "But I wouldn't cause a scene in public."

He snorted and took my other hand this time instead of setting one on my waist. Nico and I laughed and we did a turn like my brother and I had done earlier. We were dancing like four-year olds now with our arms swaying more than our bodies. It was almost more fun this way, though.

Despite her reaction towards Cara tonight, I was determined to keep my spot at the top of Annabeth's "Most Unexpected Wrench in Any and All Carefully Planned Athena Plans."

The only way to do that was to eliminate the threat so I suppose it was time for me to start scheming for ways to get rid of Cara (or at least keep her away from Percy and Annabeth). _Maybe it was time to call in some help._

* * *

><p><strong>(AN: ****GUYS. I HAVE A PINTERST PROBLEM but that's not relevant haha ;) AHHHHH **I love my reviewers so much! You guys are the absolute best, I swear. Thanks so much for all the love and I hope I can return it with this chapter that everyone has waited so patiently for! THANK YOU everyone! Oh, and ******Percy and Leila dancing together was totally ****_AnnabethLuna's_**** idea and I lovelovelove it so much. It reminds me of Sam and Patrick dancing in ****_the Perks of Being a Wallflower_****. Anyone else seen and LOVE that movie or am alone?)**

* * *

><p><strong>Answering last chapter's question: <strong>Oh, boy. I loved the response to last chapter's question! Everyone made me laugh and I got quite a range of answers haha :) Personally, I've always called the sugary decorations on top of ice cream sprinkles but I think that's one of the regional things...

**This chapter's question: **_Do you like to dance?_


	11. Signing Off

April 23, 2015

Currently, life has taken me other places outside . This site and the stories I have posted here will always hold a very special place in my heart, as do the readers that have supported me through the years. I don't know what would have happened if I had I never gotten that first review telling me to continue writing. I never expected to go as far as I did. Thank you to every single one of my readers, and I'm sorry that I may never finish writing about Leila Jackson and her adventures. I will never stop writing about her, but I may never post again.

I'm sorry it's been over a year since I've posted, but don't think I've stopped writing. Someday, I'll share my original stories and you'll meet new characters with new adventures. I'll already looking forward to what you say about them. I hope you'll love them as much as you appreciate Leila. You all took such good care of her and I can't thank you enough for your support. Never hesitate to message me with questions. I would love to support all fanfiction writers and readers.

I love you all so much. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Kimby


End file.
